Act Natural: a Cultural History of Misadventures in Parenting. Jennifer Traig, $33.50

From a distinctive, inimitable voice, a wickedly funny and fascinating romp through the strange and often contradictory history of Western parenting

Why do we read our kids fairy tales about homicidal stepparents? How did helicopter parenting develop if it used to be perfectly socially acceptable to abandon your children? Why do we encourage our babies to crawl if crawling won’t help them learn to walk?

These are just some of the questions that came to Jennifer Traig when — exhausted, frazzled, and at sea after the birth of her two children — she began to interrogate the traditional parenting advice she’d been conditioned to accept at face value. The result is Act Natural, hilarious and deft dissection of the history of Western parenting, written with the signature biting wit and deep insights Traig has become known for. Moving from ancient Rome to Puritan New England to the Dr. Spock craze of mid-century America, Traig cheerfully explores historic and present-day parenting techniques ranging from the misguided, to the nonsensical, to the truly horrifying. Be it childbirth, breastfeeding, or the ways in which we teach children how to sleep, walk, eat, and talk, she leaves no stone unturned in her quest for answers: Have our techniques actually evolved into something better? Or are we still just scrambling in the dark?

Adoption at the Movies: a Year of Adoption-Friendly Movie Nights to Get Your Family Talking. Addison Cooper, $25.95

Get your family talking about adoption with the ultimate collection of films to help the whole family to explore their feelings in a fun and safe way.

With a film for each week of the year, Addison Cooper has compiled the best movies, new and old, for family-friendly viewing. Among those featured are Finding Dory, Frozen, Paddington, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Kung Fu Panda, Star Wars, Divergent, The Blind Side and I am Sam. Carefully selected, the movies included will help families to comfortably talk about important adoption-related topics. They are accompanied by descriptions of the themes and ideas to get the conversations started. Helping all members of the family to explore both the pain and joy of adoption, they cover a range of issues which can arise such as culture, identity, control, and reunification. With something for everyone — from kids, to teens, to grown-ups — this is a must-have for all adoptive families.

Ahead of the Game: the Parents’ Guide to Youth Sports Concussion. Rosemarie Scolaro Moser, $18.95

Sports-related concussions, also known as mild traumatic brain injuries, have become a national epidemic. New research has shown that there is no such thing as a simple “bell-ringer,” and that sending a child back on the field too soon puts his or her physical and emotional health at risk. Yet it is all too easy to miss the warning signs of concussion, or to encourage kids to “walk off” a potentially devastating injury. Ahead of the Game is the first book to give parents of school-aged athletes the tools they need to keep kids safe on the field, court, diamond, or rink.

Ahead of the Game clearly lays out the basics of identification, management, and treatment of concussion in kids, and details the vital steps we can take to protect their most vital organ — the brain — before an injury occurs.

All the Rage: Mothers, Fathers, and the Myth of Equal Parenting. Darcy Lockman, $21.99

How, in a culture that pays lip service to women’s equality and lauds the benefits of father involvement — benefits that extend far beyond the well-being of the kids themselves — can a commitment to fairness in marriage melt away upon the arrival of children?

Counting on male partners who will share the burden, women today have been left with what political scientists call unfulfilled, rising expectations. Historically these disappointed expectations lie at the heart of revolutions, insurgencies, and civil unrest. If so many couples are living this way, and so many women are angered or just exhausted by it, why do we remain so stuck? Where is our revolution, our insurgency, our civil unrest?

Darcy Lockman drills deep to find answers, exploring how the feminist promise of true domestic partnership almost never, in fact, comes to pass. Starting with her own marriage as a ground zero case study, she moves outward, chronicling the experiences of a diverse cross-section of women raising children with men; visiting new mothers’ groups and pioneering co-parenting specialists; and interviewing experts across academic fields, from gender studies professors and anthropologists to neuroscientists and primatologists. Lockman identifies three tenets that have upheld the cultural gender division of labor and peels back the ways in which both men and women unintentionally perpetuate old norms.

If we can all agree that equal pay for equal work should be a given, can the same apply to unpaid work? Can justice finally come home?

All You Need Is Love: Celebrating Families of All Shapes and Sizes. Shanni Collins, $21.95

All families come in different shapes and sizes, but they are all special when they love and respect each other. These rhyming stories are a celebration of the diversity of families and encourage inclusion and acceptance in a child's relationships.

By promoting diversity and understanding in family life and elsewhere, these stories support a positive approach to life at a young age, which fosters strong mental health and well-being. Each page is dedicated to a different family, with stories exploring adoption, fostering, disability, race, gender, and illness. Filled with humour and delightfully illustrated, children will love reading these stories with friends, family and in school again and again.

The Awakened Family: a Revolution in Parenting. Shefali Tsabary, $23.00

From the author of the bestselling book The Conscious Parent —

We all have the capacity to raise children who are highly resilient and emotionally connected. However, many of us are unable to because we are blinded by modern misconceptions of parenting and our own inner limitations. In The Awakened Family, Shefali Tsabary will show you how you can cultivate a relationship with your children so they can thrive; moreover, you can be transformed to a state of greater calm, compassion and wisdom as well.

This book will take you on a journey to transcending your fears and illusions around parenting and help you become the parent you always wanted to be: fully present and conscious. It will arm you with practical, hands-on strategies and real-life examples that show the extraordinary power of being a conscious parent. 

Balanced and Barefoot: How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Strong, Confident, and Capable Children. Angela Hanscom, $24.95

Today’s kids have adopted sedentary lifestyles filled with television, video games, and computer screens. But more and more, studies show that children need “rough and tumble” outdoor play in order to develop their sensory, motor, and executive functions.

Using the same philosophy that lies at the heart of her popular TimberNook program — that nature is the ultimate sensory experience, and that psychological and physical health improves for children when they spend time outside on a regular basis — author Angela Hanscom offers several strategies to help children thrive, even in an urban environment.

Today it is rare to find children rolling down hills, climbing trees, or spinning in circles just for fun. We’ve taken away merry-go-rounds, shortened the length of swings, and done away with teeter-totters to keep children safe. Children have fewer opportunities for unstructured outdoor play than ever before, and recess times at school are shrinking due to demanding educational environments. With this book, you’ll discover little things you can do anytime, anywhere to help your kids achieve the movement they need to be happy and healthy in mind, body, and spirit.

Being at Your Best When Your Kids Are at Their Worst: Practical Compassion in Parenting. Kim John Payne, $25.95

When children are at their most difficult and challenging situations arise, how can we react in a way that reflects our family values and expectations? Often, when children “push our buttons,” we find ourselves reacting in ways that are far from our principles, often further inflaming a situation. When our children are at their worst, they need us to be at our best — or as close to it as we can be. Educator and family counselor Kim John Payne, author of Simplicity Parenting, offers techniques that simply and directly shift these damaging patterns in communication and parental behavior. These grounded and practical strategies will help you:

• Slow down the interaction
• Be more in control of your reactions
• Open up a much wider range of helpful responses
• Sense what your child’s deeper needs are even though they are misbehaving
• Respond in a way that gives your child a feeling of being heard and still puts a boundary in place

Payne’s meditative approach can be done anywhere, anytime; it lifts you out of old, unwanted patterns of action-reaction and prepares you so that the voice you speak with is closer to the parent you want to be. His concrete and simple techniques can help you, and your children, be at your best, even in the most challenging of times.

Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family. Susan Katz Miller, $27.00

Susan Katz Miller grew up with a Jewish father and Christian mother, and was raised Jewish. Now in an interfaith marriage herself, she is one of the growing number of Americans who are boldly electing to raise children with both faiths, rather than in one religion or the other (or without religion). In Being Both, Miller draws on original surveys and interviews with parents, students, teachers, and clergy, as well as on her own journey, to chronicle this controversial grassroots movement. Miller argues that there are distinct benefits for families who reject the false choice of “either/or” and instead embrace the synergy of being both. Reporting on hundreds of parents and children who celebrate two religions, she documents why couples make this choice, and how children appreciate dual-faith education.

Miller includes advice and resources for interfaith families planning baby-welcoming and coming-of-age ceremonies, and seeking to find or form interfaith education programs. And finally, looking beyond Judaism and Christianity, Being Both provides the first glimpse of the next interfaith wave: intermarried Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist couples raising children in two religions. Being Both is at once a rousing declaration of the benefits of celebrating two religions, and a blueprint for interfaith families who are seeking guidance and community support. 

Being a Dad Is Weird: Lessons in Fatherhood from My Family to Yours. Ben Falcone, $31.99

Though he’s best known for his appearances in the movie Enough Said, as well as his hilarious role as Air Marshall Jon in Bridesmaids, Ben Falcone isn’t a big shot movie star director at home. There, he’s just dad. In this winning collection of stories, Ben shares his funny and poignant adventures as the husband of Melissa McCarthy, and the father of their two young daughters. He also shares tales from his own childhood in Southern Illinois, and life with his father — an outspoken, brilliant, but unconventional man with a big heart and a somewhat casual approach to employment named Steve Falcone.

Ben is just an ordinary dad who has his share of fights with other parents blocking his view with their expensive electronic devices at school performances. Navigating the complicated role of being the only male in a house full of women, he finds himself growing more and more concerned as he sounds more and more like his dad. While Steve Falcone may not have been the briefcase and gray flannel suit type, he taught Ben priceless lessons about what matters most in life. A supportive, creative, and downright funny dad, Steve made sure his sons’ lives were never dull — a sense of adventure that carries through this warm, sometimes hilarious, and poignant memoir.

Being Happy, Raising Happy: the Empowered Mom's Guide to Helping Her Spirited Child Bloom. Maureen Lake, $21.95

Designing a wellness program that honestly fits your family and lifestyle takes time, determination, and loving passion. Being Happy, Raising Happy is for loving and caring moms who somehow forgot about their own needs, desires, and the impact they want to make in the world and want to start their journey towards revitalizing the mind, body, and spirit. Maureen Lake teaches moms:

• The reason why parenting a spirited child can cause more stress and anxiety than parenting children who don’t have the same challenges
• The importance of cherishing themselves and setting clear boundaries so they can nurture their child
• How to uncover the areas of their lives that are causing the most stress and anxiety
• How to regain footing by following a five-step process toward peace of mind
• How to better manage kids and family with a nutrition plan to increase energy and other wellness tips that boost the immune system and create better overall health

Blissfully Blended Bullshit: the Uncomfortable Truth of Blending Families. Rebecca Eckler, $20.99

Blissfully Blended Bullshit is a witty, engaging, refreshingly candid chronicle of a modern family’s journey as they blend households. We follow Eckler as her partner and two children move in with her and her daughter. Then, thanks to a reverse vasectomy, they add another baby to the mix. Readers go along for the ride in this poignant, often hilarious tale, as everyone attempts to navigate their new roles: the children, the in-laws, the exes, the ex-in-laws, and even the dog.

Lighthearted and intimate, this is an indispensable story about a family determined to make blended splendid, and the juicy truth of what it’s really like behind closed doors in what is rapidly becoming a typical family makeup. Still, if Eckler had to blend again, would she?

Boosting Brain Power: 52 Ways to Use What Science Tells Us. Jill Stamm, $18.95

If the timing is right, the learning that occurs in the first five years can be a gold mine, promoting valuable cognitive and physical development that lasts a lifetime. Boosting Brain Power provides 52 strategies — one for every week of the year — to help stimulate healthy brain growth in young children. In addition to well-researched strategies, each snippet of information offers evidence-based instructions for how to bring the concepts to life.

BOYS: What it Takes To Become a Man. Rachel Giese, $19.99

The successes of feminism have led to greater opportunities for girls, by challenging stifling stereotypes about femininity and broadening the understanding of what it means to be female. While boys have travelled alongside this transformation, narrow definitions of masculinity and manliness haven’t faced the same degree of scrutiny. Whether they’re being urged to “man up” or warned that “boys don’t cry,” young men are subjected to damaging messages about manliness: they must muzzle their emotions and never show weakness, dominate girls and compete with one another.

Boys: What It Means to Become a Man examines how these toxic rules can hinder boys’ emotional and social development. If girls can expand the borders of femaleness, could boys also be set free of limiting, damaging expectations about manhood and masculinity? Could what’s been labelled “the boy crisis” be the beginning of a revolution in how we raise young men?

Drawing on extensive research and interviews with educators, activists, parents, psychologists, sociologists, and young men, Giese — mother to a son herself — examines the myths of masculinity and the challenges facing boys today. She reports from boys-only sex education classes and recreational sports leagues; talks to parents of transgender children and plays video games with her son. She tells stories of boys navigating the transition into manhood and how the upheaval in cultural norms about sex, sexuality and the myths of masculinity have changed the coming of age process for today’s boys. With lively reportage and clear-eyed analysis, Giese reveals that the movement for gender equality has the potential to liberate us all.

Brain-Based Parenting: the Neuroscience of Caregiving for Healthy Attachment. Daniel Hughes & Jonathan Baylin, $39.95

In this groundbreaking exploration of the brain mechanisms behind healthy caregiving, attachment specialist Daniel Hughes and veteran clinical psychologist Jonathan Baylin guide readers through the intricate web of neuronal processes, hormones, and chemicals that drive — and sometimes thwart — our caregiving impulses, uncovering the mysteries of the parental brain. 

The biggest challenge to parents, Hughes and Baylin explain, is learning how to regulate emotions that arise — feeling them deeply and honestly while staying grounded and aware enough to preserve the parent–child relationship. Learning to be a "good parent" is contingent upon learning how to manage stress, understand its brain-based cues, and respond in a way that will set the brain back on track. With this awareness, we learn how to approach kids with renewed playfulness, acceptance, curiosity, and empathy, re-regulate our caregiving systems, foster deeper social engagement, and facilitate our children's development.

Infused with clinical insight, illuminating case examples, and helpful illustrations, Brain-Based Parenting brings the science of caregiving to light for the first time. Far from just managing our children's behavior, we can develop our "parenting brains," and with a better understanding of the neurobiological roots of our feelings and our own attachment histories, we can transform a fraught parent-child relationship into an open, regulated, and loving one.

Brainstorm: the Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain. Daniel Siegel, $24.00

Between the ages of 12 and 24, the brain changes in important, and oftentimes maddening, ways. It’s no wonder that many parents approach their child’s adolescence with fear and trepidation. According to renowned neuropsychiatrist Daniel Siegel, however, if parents and teens can work together to form a deeper understanding of the brain science behind all the tumult, they will be able to turn conflict into connection and form a deeper understanding of one another.    

In Brainstorm, Siegel illuminates how brain development impacts teenagers’ behavior and relationships. Drawing on important new research in the field of interpersonal neurobiology, he explores exciting ways in which understanding how the teenage brain functions can help parents make what is in fact an incredibly positive period of growth, change, and experimentation in their children’s lives less lonely and distressing on both sides of the generational divide.

A Child’s Brain: Understanding How the Brain Works, Develops, and Changes During Critical Stages of Childhood. Robert Sylwester, $25.95

A Child's Brain is a guide understanding children’s cognitive development, and how to nurture children to their full potential. The book examines the neurobiology of childhood, explaining the body and brain systems that develop during pregnancy, infancy, and childhood. It explores factors that can enhance or delay development, such as nutrition, family life, relationships, illness, intelligence, technology, creativity, and the arts. The book also provides practical suggestions to help adults promote healthy development and successful learning in the children they encounter at home, at school, and everywhere else. A Child's Brain helps parents and educators understand the biological, emotional, and neurological changes that occur during childhood so they can support children’s learning, socialization, and growth.

Childhood Under Siege: How Big Business Targets Children. Joel Bakan, $24.00 

Childhood Under Siege reveals big business's discovery of a new resource to be mined for profit — our children. It’s a winner-takes-all battle for children’s hearts, minds and bodies as corporations pump billions into rendering parents and governments powerless to protect children from their calculated commercial assault and its disturbing toll on their health and well-being. Childhood Under Siege is a shocking venture behind the scenes of the widespread manipulation of children by profit-seeking corporations — and of society’s failure to protect them.

Confident Parents, Confident Kids: Raising Emotional Intelligence in Ourselves and Our Kids — From Toddlers to Teenagers. Jennifer Miller, $28.99

Confident Parents, Confident Kids lays out an approach for helping parents — and the kids they love — hone their emotional intelligence so that they can make wise choices, connect and communicate well with others (even when patience is thin), and become socially conscious and confident human beings.

How do we raise a happy, confident kid? And how can we be confident that our parenting is preparing our child for success? Our confidence develops from understanding and having a mastery over our emotions (aka emotional intelligence) — and helping our children do the same. Like learning to play a musical instrument, we can fine-tune our ability to skillfully react to those crazy, wonderful, big feelings that naturally arise from our child’s constant growth and changes, moving from chaos to harmony. We want our children to trust that they can conquer any challenge with hard work and persistence; that they can love boundlessly; that they will find their unique sense of purpose; and they will act wisely in a complex world. This book shows you how.

The Conscious Parent. Shefali Tsabary, $29.95

Turning the traditional notion of parenting on its head, Dr. Tsabary shifts the parent-child relationship away from the traditional parent-to-child “teaching” approach to a parent-with-child relationship that is mindful, conscious and mutually supportive.

Cribsheet: a Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool. Emily Oster, $24.00

With Expecting Better, award-winning economist Emily Oster spotted a need in the pregnancy market for advice that gave women the information they needed to make the best decision for their own pregnancies. By digging into the data, Oster found that much of the conventional pregnancy wisdom was wrong. In Cribsheet, she now tackles an even greater challenge: decision-making in the early years of parenting.

As any new parent knows, there is an abundance of often-conflicting advice hurled at you from doctors, family, friends, and strangers on the internet. From the earliest days, parents get the message that they must make certain choices around feeding, sleep, and schedule or all will be lost. There's a rule — or three — for everything. But the benefits of these choices can be overstated, and the trade-offs can be profound. How do you make your own best decision?

Armed with the data, Oster finds that the conventional wisdom doesn't always hold up. She debunks myths around breastfeeding (not a panacea), sleep training (not so bad!), potty training (wait until they're ready or possibly bribe with M&Ms), language acquisition (early talkers aren't necessarily geniuses), and many other topics. She also shows parents how to think through freighted questions like if and how to go back to work, how to think about toddler discipline, and how to have a relationship and parent at the same time.

Economics is the science of decision-making, and Cribsheet is a thinking parent's guide to the chaos and frequent misinformation of the early years. Emily Oster is a trained expert — and mom of two — who can empower us to make better, less fraught decisions — and stay sane in the years before preschool.

The Dad Factor: How Father-Baby Bonding Helps a Child for Life. Richard Fletcher, $27.95

This stimulating book explores many fascinating new understandings of the importance of a father in a child’s development. Richard Fletcher, a pioneer researcher in the area of men’s health and family issues, examines how a father’s close bond with his baby is vital for the development of the child’s healthy brain structure and their cognitive and emotional development.

The Dad Factor presents explanations of why a father’s involvement with his child, right from birth, is vitally important to the development of a child’s brain and emotional stability. Additionally, Richard Fletcher addresses some contentious issues of child development, examines the evolution of a father’s role, and uses feedback from men in his parenting classes to answer many questions a new father-to-be might have.

Dad to Dad: Parenting Like a Pro. David Hill, $19.99

All fathers have heard it before — having a baby really changes your life. Dr. David is a dad and a pediatrician. Inside this practical book, dads and dads-to-be will find helpful information on topics such as:

• Infant and child development
• Baby basics — crying, sleeping, pooping, and eating
• Everyday illnesses and what to look for — fevers, ear infections, colds, stomach bugs, and sore throats
• A guide to vaccines, when to get them, and just what they're for
• Sound advice to cope with toddlerhood and beyond

Daddy Doin' Work: Empowering Mothers to Evolve Fatherhood. Doyin Richards, $20.99

Doyin Richards answers questions about fatherhood that many women want to know in his no-nonsense, entertaining style. He urges new mothers to enter the minds of new dads, thereby changing their perception of what should be expected from a modern father. Richards exposes the manipulative secrets of deadbeat dads, offers practical tips to help hardworking dads understand that being a father encompasses more than paying the bills, and provides methods to ensure that amazing dads stay on track, while inspiring more fathers to be just like them. The conversation also asks mothers to take a long look in the mirror to determine if they are part of the solution — or part of the problem — in shaping the behavior of modern fathers.

The Danish Way of Parenting: What the Happiest People in the World Know about Raising Confident, Capable Kids. Jessica Joelle Alexander & Iben Dissing Sandahl, $22.00

What makes Denmark the happiest country in the world, and how do Danish parents raise happy, confident, successful kids, year after year? This upbeat and practical guide reveals the habits of the happiest families on earth. With illuminating examples and simple yet powerful advice, the authors present six essential principles, which spell out P-A-R-E-N-T:

• Play is essential for development and well-being.
• Authenticity fosters trust and an "inner compass."
• Reframing helps kids cope with setbacks and look on the bright side.
• Empathy allows us to act with kindness towards others.
• No ultimatums means no power struggles, lines in the sand, or resentment.
• Togetherness is a way to celebrate family time, on special occasions and every day. The Danes call this hygge — and it's a simple yet meaningful way to foster a close bond.

A revealing and fresh take on cross-cultural parenting advice, The Danish Way of Parenting will help parents from all walks of life raise the happiest, most well-adjusted kids in the world.

Decoding Boys: New Science Behind the Subtle Art of Raising Sons. Cara Natterson, $36.00

What is my son doing behind his constantly closed door? What’s with his curt responses, impulsiveness, newfound obsession with gaming, and... that funky smell? As pediatrician and mother of two teenagers Cara Natterson explains, puberty starts in boys long before any visible signs appear, and that causes confusion about their changing temperaments for boys and parents alike. Often, they also grow quieter as they grow taller, which leads to less parent-child communication. But, as Natterson warns in Decoding Boys, we respect their increasing “need” for privacy, monosyllabic conversations, and alone time at their peril. Explaining how modern culture mixes badly with male adolescent biology, Natterson offers science, strategies, scripts, and tips for getting it right:

• recognizing the first signs of puberty and talking to our sons about the wide range of “normal” through the whole developmental process
• why teenagers make irrational decisions even though they look mature — and how to steer them toward better choices
• managing video game and screen time, including discussing the unrealistic and dangerous nature of pornography
• why boys need emotional and physical contact with parents — and how to give it in ways they’ll accept
• how to prepare boys to resist both old and new social pressures — drugs, alcohol, vaping, and sexting
• teaching consent and sensitivity in the #MeToo culture

Decoding Boys is a powerful and validating lifeline, a book that will help today’s parents keep their sons safe, healthy, and resilient, as well as ensure they will become emotionally secure young men.

Do Parents Matter? Why Japanese Babies Sleep Soundly, Mexican Siblings Don't Fight, and American Families Should Just Relax. Robert LeVine & Sarah LeVine, $33.99

American parents drive themselves crazy trying to raise perfect children. There is always another news article or scientific finding proclaiming the importance of some factor or other, but it's easy to miss the bigger picture: that parents can only affect their children so much.

In their decades-long study of global parenting styles, Harvard anthropologists (and grandparents themselves) Robert LeVine and Sarah LeVine reveal how culture may affect children more than parents do. Japanese children co-sleep with their parents well into grade school, while women of the Hausa tribe avoid verbal and eye contact with their infants, and yet, they are as likely as any of us to raise happy, well-adjusted children. The LeVines' fascinating global survey suggests we embrace our limitations as parents, instead of exhausting ourselves by constantly trying to fix them. Do Parents Matter? is likely the deepest and broadest survey of its kind, with profound lessons for the way we think about our families.

The Earthbound Parent: How (and Why) to Raise Your Little Angels Without Religion. Richard Conn, $19.95

Richard Conn demonstrates why all parents who value science and reason can help stop the centuries-old practice of religious indoctrination and offers advice on how to encourage children to discover the world and their place in it for themselves. Only by teaching them that we are in this world together and have a limited time to live can we truly enable them to flourish and build a peaceful world — not just for their generation but for the future.

The Enchanted Hour: the Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction. Meghan Cox Gurdon, $21.99

A miraculous alchemy occurs when one person reads to another, transforming the simple stuff of a book, a voice, and a bit of time into complex and powerful fuel for the heart, brain, and imagination. Grounded in the latest neuroscience and behavioral research, and drawing widely from literature, The Enchanted Hour explains the dazzling cognitive and social-emotional benefits that await children, whatever their class, nationality or family background. Reading aloud consoles, uplifts and invigorates at every age, deepening the intellectual lives and emotional well-being of teenagers and adults, too.

Meghan Cox Gurdon argues that this ancient practice is a fast-working antidote to the fractured attention spans, atomized families and unfulfilling ephemera of the tech era, helping to replenish what our devices are leaching away. For everyone, reading aloud engages the mind in complex narratives; for children, it’s an irreplaceable gift that builds vocabulary, fosters imagination, and kindles a lifelong appreciation of language, stories and pictures.

Experimenting with Babies: 50 Amazing Science Projects You Can Perform on Your Kid. Shaun Gallagher, $22.00

This fascinating and hands-on guide shows you how to recreate landmark scientific studies on cognitive, motor, language, and behavioral development — using your own bundle of joy as the research subject. Simple, engaging, and fun for both baby and parents, each project sheds light on how your child is acquiring new skills — everything from recognizing faces, voices, and shapes to understanding new words, learning to walk, and even distinguishing between right and wrong. Whether your little research subject is a newborn, a few months old, or a toddler, these simple, surprising projects will help you see the world through your baby’s eyes.

Fantastic First Time Father: 50 Things You Really Need to Know. Tim Mungeam, $24.99

Crucial information and advice that will help you every step of the way — from finding out you are going to be a parent, to your responsibilities as a role model and a caregiver.

The Feminist's Guide to Raising a Little Princess: How to Raise a Girl Who's Authentic, Joyful, and Fearless — Even If She Refuses to Wear Anything But a Pink Tutu. Devorah Blachor, $22.00

“May God grant me the serenity to accept the color pink, the courage to not let my house become a shrine to pink and princesses, and the wisdom to know that pink is just a color, not a decision to never attend college in the hopes of marrying wealthy.”  - from The Feminist’s Guide to Raising a Little Princess

Devorah Blachor, an ardent feminist, never expected to be the parent of a little girl who was totally obsessed with the color pink, princesses, and all things girly. When her three-year-old daughter fell down the Disney Princess rabbit hole, she wasn’t sure how to reconcile the difference between her parental expectations and the reality of her daughter’s passion.

In this book inspired by her viral New York Times Motherlode piece “Turn Your Princess-Obsessed Toddler Into a Feminist in Eight Easy Steps,” Blachor offers insight, advice, and plenty of humor and personal anecdotes for other mothers who cringe each morning when their daughter refuses to wear anything that isn’t pink. Her story of how she surrendered control and opened up — to her Princess Toddler, to pink, and to life — is a universal tale of modern parenting. She addresses important issues such as how to raise a daughter in a society that pressures girls and women to bury their own needs, conform to a beauty standard and sacrifice their own passions. Smart, funny, and thought-provoking, this book shows feminist parents how to navigate their daughters’ princess-obsessed years by taking a non-judgmental and positive approach.

52 Questions for Families: Learn More about Your Family — One Question At a Time. Travis Hellstrom, $7.50

Talking with your family is essential to creating lasting bonds and great memories, and it has never been easier than with 52 Questions for Families, which includes a year’s worth of fun, thought-provoking conversation starters to help you learn more about your loved ones. Whether you want to get to know your children better, find out what the past was like from Grandma, or just want to spend a family night in, 52 Questions for Families can ask all of the questions for you.

52 Small Changes for the Family. Brett Blumenthal & Danielle Shea Tan, $26.95

Small changes can make a big impact on creating a healthy, happy family. In 52 Small Changes for the Family, bestselling author Brett Blumenthal teams up with family health practitioner Danielle Shea Tan to reveal how to build a foundation of health and happiness in the family. The idea is simple: Make one small change a week for 52 weeks and at the end of the year, you and your children will enjoy a happier, healthier lifestyle. 52 Small Changes for the Family will teach you and your family how to:

• Minimize clutter while organizing your space
• Foster a positive relationship with food
• Prioritize time in nature and take care of the environment
• Have meaningful conversations
• Use technology socially and safely
• Teach and practice financial responsibility
• Volunteer and give back to the community
• Promote curiosity and encourage a love of learning
• Build resilience, confidence, and cultivate emotional intelligence

Forest School Adventure: Outdoor Skills and Play for Children. Naomi Walmsley & Dan Westall, $31.95

From essential bushcraft basics and Stone Age skills to joyful outdoor play, Forest School Adventure is packed with ideas to bring your little ones closer to nature and all its magical offerings. Learn how to:

• light a fire without matches
• build a shelter to sleep in
• cook on a fire
• hunt for bugs and much more

Young children will be immersed in imaginative, messy play and crafts, while older ones can work on more complex activities like stone tool making and sourcing water. Whether in an organized setting, a group of friends or a family outing, the fun-filled games will build confidence, bonding and result in happy children. Entertaining anecdotes from the authors' own experience of surviving in the wild can be read aloud to children, bringing to life the thrilling reality of sleeping in a cave or savoring your first-ever foraged meal.

Foster Parenting Step-by-Step: How to Nurture the Traumatized Child and Overcome Conflict. Kalyani Gopal, $17.95

When you decide to foster, you are faced with many difficult decisions, dilemmas and questions: How do you navigate the daily struggles of foster parenting? How can you nurture bonds with your foster child who is angry, sad, and defiant? How can you prepare to step back when it's time to let go?

FOSTER PARENTING STEP-BY-STEP is a concise how-to guide to fostering that summarizes what to expect as a foster parent, and gives immediate practical solutions. It outlines the different stages of a fostering relationship, raising common issues encountered at each age and how to tackle them. It also explains the impact of trauma on your child: how this can show itself through challenging behavior and how to respond to it. This book will provide fostering parents with the skills and knowledge to support the needs of the children in foster care. It will be invaluable not just to foster parents but also to those professionals supporting foster placements.

The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us about the Relationship Between Parents and Children. Alison Gopnik, $23.50

Caring deeply about our children is part of what makes us human. Yet the thing we call "parenting" is a surprisingly new invention. In the past thirty years, the concept of parenting and the multibillion dollar industry surrounding it have transformed child care into obsessive, controlling, and goal-oriented labor intended to create a particular kind of child and therefore a particular kind of adult. In The Gardener and the Carpenter, the pioneering developmental psychologist and philosopher Alison Gopnik argues that the familiar 21st-century picture of parents and children is profoundly wrong — it's not just based on bad science, it's bad for kids and parents, too.

Drawing on the study of human evolution and her own cutting-edge scientific research into how children learn, Gopnik shows that although caring for children is profoundly important, it is not a matter of shaping them to turn out a particular way. Children are designed to be messy and unpredictable, playful and imaginative, and to be very different both from their parents and from each other. The variability and flexibility of childhood lets them innovate, create, and survive in an unpredictable world. “Parenting" won't make children learn — but caring parents let children learn by creating a secure, loving environment.

Gender Born, Gender Made: Raising Healthy Gender-Nonconforming Children. Diane Ehrensaft, $25.95

GENDER BORN, GENDER MADE is a comprehensive guidebook for the parents and therapists of children who do not identify with or behave according to their biological gender. Drawing on the case histories of several children, each "gender creative" in his or her own way, Dr. Diane Ehrensaft offers concrete strategies for understanding and supporting children who experience confusion about their gender identities. She also discusses the latest therapeutic advancements available to gender-variant children.

Traditionally, psychologists have sought to "cure" gender variance by pressuring children to conform to typical gender behavior. From her perspective as both clinician and parent of a gender creative child, Dr. Ehrensaft advocates a new approach, encouraging caregivers to support gender-variant children as they explore their gender identities. Rather than offering a "cure" for gender variance, GENDER BORN, GENDER MADE facilitates improved understanding and communication about gender identity.

The Gender Creative Child: Pathways for Nurturing and Supporting Children Who Love Outside Gender Boxes. Diane Ehrensaft, $23.95

In her groundbreaking first book, Gender Born, Gender Made, Dr. Diane Ehrensaft coined the term gender creative to describe children whose unique gender expression or sense of identity is not defined by a checkbox on their birth certificate. Now, with The Gender Creative Child, she returns to guide parents and professionals through the rapidly changing cultural, medical, and legal landscape of gender and identity.

In this up-to-date, comprehensive resource, Dr. Ehrensaft explains the interconnected effects of biology, nurture, and culture to explore why gender can be fluid, rather than binary. As an advocate for the gender affirmative model and with the expertise she has gained over three decades of pioneering work with children and families, she encourages caregivers to listen to each child, learn their particular needs, and support their quest for a true gender self. The Gender Creative Child unlocks the door to a gender-expansive world, revealing pathways for positive change in our schools, our communities, and the world.

Gentle Discipline: Using Emotional Connection — Not Punishment — to Raise Confident, Capable Kids. Sarah Ockwell-Smith, $22.00

Discipline is an essential part of raising happy and successful kids, but as more and more parents are discovering, conventional approaches often don’t work, and can even lead to more frustration, resentment, power struggles, and shame. Enter Sarah Ockwell-Smith, a popular parenting expert who believes there’s a better way. Citing the latest research in child development, psychology and neuroscience, Gentle Discipline debunks common myths about punishments, rewards, the “naughty chair,” and more, and presents practical, connection-based techniques that really work–and that bring parents and kids closer together instead of driving then apart. Topics include:

• Setting — and enforcing — boundaries and limits with compassion and respect
• Focusing on connection and positivity instead of negative consequences
• Working with teachers and other caregivers
• Breaking the cycle of shaming and blaming

Filled with ideas to try today, Gentle Discipline helps parents of toddlers as well  as school-age kids embrace a new, more enlightened way to help kids listen, learn and grow.

The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed. Jessica Lahey, $19.99

Modern parenting is defined by an unprecedented level of overprotectiveness — parents now rush to school to deliver forgotten assignments, challenge teachers on report card disappointments, mastermind children's friendships, and interfere on the playing field. As teacher, journalist, and parent Jessica Lahey explains, even though these parents see themselves as being highly responsive to their children's well-being, they aren't giving them the chance to experience failure — or the opportunity to learn to solve their own problems.

Everywhere she turned, Lahey saw an obvious and startling fear of failure, in both her students and in her own children. This fear has the potential to undermine children's autonomy, competence, motivation, and their relationships with the adults in their lives. Providing a clear path toward solutions, Lahey lays out a blueprint with targeted advice for handling homework, report cards, social dynamics, and sports. Most important, she sets forth a plan to help parents learn to step back and embrace their children's setbacks along with their successes.

Empathetic and wise, The Gift of Failure is essential reading for parents, educators, and psychologists nationwide who want to help children thrive — and grow into independent, confident adults.

A Girl Named Lovely: One Child's Miraculous Survival and My Journey to the Heart of Haiti. Catherine Porter, $24.99

In January 2010, a devastating earthquake struck Haiti, killing hundreds of thousands of people and paralyzing the country. Catherine Porter, a newly minted international reporter, was on the ground in the immediate aftermath. Moments after she arrived in Haiti, Catherine found her first story. A ragtag group of volunteers told her about a “miracle child” — a two-year-old girl who had survived six days under the rubble and emerged virtually unscathed. Catherine found the girl the next day. Her family was a mystery; her future uncertain. Her name was Lovely. She seemed a symbol of Haiti — both hopeful and despairing.

When Catherine learned that Lovely had been reunited with her family, she did what any journalist would do and followed the story. The cardinal rule of journalism is to remain objective and not become personally involved in the stories you report. But Catherine broke that rule on the last day of her second trip to Haiti. That day, Catherine made the simple decision to enroll Lovely in school, and to pay for it with money she and her readers donated.

Over the next five years, Catherine would visit Lovely and her family seventeen times, while also reporting on the country’s struggles to harness the international rush of aid. Each trip, Catherine's relationship with Lovely and her family became more involved and more complicated. Trying to balance her instincts as a mother and a journalist, and increasingly conscious of the costs involved, Catherine found herself struggling to align her worldview with the realities of Haiti after the earthquake. Although her dual roles as donor and journalist were constantly at odds, as one piled up expectations and the other documented failures, a third role had emerged and quietly become the most important: that of a friend.

A Girl Named Lovely is about the reverberations of a single decision — in Lovely’s life and in Catherine’s. It recounts a journalist’s voyage into the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, hit by the greatest natural disaster in modern history, and the fraught, messy realities of international aid. It is about hope, kindness, heartbreak, and the modest but meaningful difference one person can make.

Good Dog, Happy Baby: Preparing Your Dog for the Arrival of Your Child. Michael Wombacher, $28.50

For years dog trainer Michael Wombacher has worked with expecting dog owners to prevent problems between dogs and children. He has also unfortunately witnessed too many families forced to surrender their beloved family companions because they failed to prepare the dog for the arrival of a new family member. In Good Dog, Happy Baby, Wombacher lays out a twelve-step process that will give families the skills they need to navigate this new era of their lives. These skills include how to evaluate dogs, resolve common behavior problems, and fully prepare dogs for a new baby. This easy-to-use guide, filled with photos and simple instructions, makes a great gift for any expecting family with a dog, whether the dog is perfectly trained or in serious need of behavioral help.

Good Moms Have Scary Thoughts: a Healing Guide to the Secret Fears of New Mothers. Karen Kleiman, illustrated by Molly McIntyre, $24.99

Over 90 percent of new mothers will have scary, intrusive thoughts about their baby and themselves. What if I drop him? What if I snap and hurt my baby? Mothering is so hard — I don't know if I really want to do this anymore. Gosh, I'm so terrible for thinking that! Yet for too many mothers, those thoughts remain secret, hidden away in a place of shame that can quickly grow into anxiety, postpartum depression, and even self-harm. But here's the good news: you CAN feel better!

Author Karen Kleiman — coauthor of the seminal book This Isn't What I Expected and founder of the acclaimed Postpartum Stress Center — comes to the aid of new mothers everywhere with a groundbreaking new source of hope, compassion, and expert help. Good Moms Have Scary Thoughts is packed with world-class guidance, simple exercises, and nearly 50 stigma-busting cartoons from the viral #speakthesecret campaign that help new moms validate their feelings, share their fears, and start feeling better. Lighthearted yet serious, warm yet not sugary, and perfectly portioned for busy moms with full plates, Good Moms Have Scary Thoughts is the go-to resource for moms, partners, and families everywhere who need help with this difficult period. LGBTQQ-friendly.

Goodnight Bubbala: a Joyful Parody. Sharyl Haft, illustrated by Jill Weber, $23.99 (ages 2-4)

In the small blue room there was a bubbala, and a little shmatta,

and then — oy vey! — came the whole mishpacha!

This zesty parody of one of America's favorite picture books offers a very different bedtime routine: one that is full of family exuberance and love. Instead of whispers of “hush,” this bedtime includes dancing and kvelling, and of course, noshing — because this little bunny is a Jewish bunny, and this joyous book celebrates the Jewish values of cherishing your loved ones, expressing gratitude, and being generous.

Filled with Yiddish words, the book includes a phonetic glossary and even an easy latke recipe by beloved cookbook author Ina Garten.

Grandparents as Parents: a Survival Guide for Raising a Second Family. Sylvie de Toledo & Deborah Edler Brown, $24.95

If you're among the millions of grandparents raising grandchildren today, you need information, support, and practical guidance you can count on to keep your family strong. This is the book for you. Learn effective strategies to help you cope with the stresses of parenting the second time around, care for vulnerable grandkids and set boundaries with their often-troubled parents, and navigate the maze of government aid, court proceedings, and special education. Wise, honest, moving stories show how numerous other grandparents are surviving and thriving in their new roles. Updated throughout, and reflecting current laws and policies affecting families, the second edition features new discussions of kids' technology use and other timely issues.

Growing Strong Girls: Practical Tools to Cultivate Connection in the Preteen Years. Lindsay Sealey, $22.99

Girls today face an astounding degree of pressure to grow up fast, to be “perfect” in every way, and to be all things to all people. They yearn to connect, but sometimes this yearning turns into negative, even destructive patterns such as passive aggressiveness, gossip, or excessive stress and anxiety. It’s heart-breaking to watch even the most confident little girls disconnect and lose their spark — and their way — when they hit the 9–14 years.

In Growing Strong Girls, educator and girl expert and advocate Lindsay Sealey reveals the tremendous power of connection to activate self-awareness, self-acceptance, and healthy social and emotional development. This wide-ranging and positive book is chock-full of ideas, tips, activities, stories and specific ways to connect with and equip girls to know and trust themselves, to create vibrant friendships and communities, and to step into their tween and teen years with resilience, bravery, confidence, and inner strength. Growing Strong Girls offers hundreds of practical ways to cultivate connection right now. Making a difference in the lives of girls is easier than you might think and powerful beyond measure.

Happy Parents Happy Kids. Ann Douglas, $22.99

Happy Parents Happy Kids is the ultimate no-guilt guide to boosting your enjoyment of parenting while at the same time maximizing the health and happiness of your entire family. You can find ways to take care of yourself while you’re busy raising a family—just as you can choose to use parenting strategies that work for you and your kids.  This practical and encouraging book will help you:

• Discover what less-stressed-out parents know about minimizing the fallout from work-life imbalance (to say nothing of all the other things our generation of parents can’t help but feel anxious about)
• Tackle the challenges of distracted parenting(in a way that helps kids to develop healthy relationships with technology)
• Balance your hopes and dreams for your children with the demands of the rest of your life
• Manage screen time for your whole family with simple and effective strategies
• Learn mindfulness strategies that can make parenting easier and can be effortlessly worked into your daily life
• Live healthier (including a crash course on the science of habit change)
• Become a calmer and more confident parent so that you can stop feeling bad and raise astonishingly great kids

The takeaway message is clear, powerful, and potentially life-changing. You can lose the guilt, embrace the joy, and thrive alongside your kids.

How To Be a Happier Parent: Raising a Family, Having a Life, and Loving (Almost) Every Minute. KJ Dell' Antonia, $36.00

In all the writing and reporting KJ Dell'Antonia has done on families over the years, one topic keeps coming up again and again: parents crave a greater sense of happiness in their daily lives. In this optimistic, solution-packed book, KJ asks: How can we change our family life so that it is full of the joy we'd always hoped for? Drawing from the latest research and interviews with families, KJ discovers that it's possible to do more by doing less, and make our family life a refuge and pleasure, rather than another stress point in a hectic day. She focuses on nine common problem spots that cause parents the most grief, explores why they are hard, and offers small, doable, sometimes surprising steps you can take to make them better.

Whether it's getting everyone out the door on time in the morning or making sure chores and homework get done without another battle, How to Be a Happier Parent shows that having a family isn't just about raising great kids and churning them out at destination: success. It's about experiencing joy — real joy, the kind you look back on, look forward to, and live for — along the way.

How to Build Your Baby's Brain: a Parent's Guide to Using New Gene Science to Raise a Smart, Secure, and Successful Child. Gail Gross, $36.99

The truth is, nature and nurture are in a delicate dance — if one goes too fast, the other one falls. Science tells us that early childhood experiences have the capacity to structure and alter the brain. That means you didn’t just supply your child’s DNA — you’re still shaping it. And it’s only by wielding this power that your child will activate their full potential. You are truly a gene therapist; manipulating and guiding your child’s genetic makeup based on the experiences you create for them.

Great parenting comes down to one mission: to be prepped and present for the windows of your child’s development so that you can take full advantage of them and help your child become a smart, successful, self-sufficient adult. It doesn’t require formal training or a fancy degree — all it takes is getting involved. Once parents learn how to flip the right gene “switches,” they can expand the limits of their child’s potential and lay the emotional and intellectual groundwork that allows them to seize opportunities for success fearlessly, naturally, and enthusiastically.

Dr. Gross combines an understanding of childhood development with practical and realistic tools to teach parents how to best take advantage of their child’s developmental windows. How to Build Your Baby's Brain translates the results from scientific studies about expanding consciousness and performance into day-to-day interaction between parents and children.

How to Raise Kind Kids: and Get Respect, Gratitude, and a Happier Family In the Bargain. Thomas Lickona, $23.00

Can you teach a child to be kind?

This vital question is taking on a new urgency as our culture grows ever more abrasive and divided.

We all want our kids to be kind. But that is not the same as knowing what to do when you catch your son being unkind.  A world-renowned developmental psychologist, Dr. Thomas Lickona has led the character education movement in schools for forty years. Now he shares with parents the vital tools they need to bring peace and foster cooperation at home. Kindness doesn’t stand on its own. It needs a supporting cast of other essential virtues — like courage, self-control, respect, and gratitude.

With concrete examples drawn from the many families Dr. Lickona has worked with over the years and clear tips you can act on tonight, How to Raise Kind Kids will help you give and get respect, hold family meetings to tackle persistent problems, discipline in a way that builds character, and improve the dynamic of your relationship with your children while putting them on the path to a happier and more fulfilling life.

How to Raise a Reader. Pamela Paul & Maria Russo, $29.95

Do you remember your first visit to where the wild things are? How about curling up for hours on end to discover the secret of the Sorcerer’s Stone? Combining clear, practical advice with inspiration, wisdom, tips, and curated reading lists, How to Raise a Reader shows you how to instill the joy and time-stopping pleasure of reading.

Divided into four sections, from baby through teen, and each illustrated by a different artist, this book offers something useful on every page, whether it’s how to develop rituals around reading or build a family library, or ways to engage a reluctant reader. A fifth section, “More Books to Love: By Theme and Reading Level,” is chockfull of expert recommendations. Throughout, the authors debunk common myths, assuage parental fears, and deliver invaluable lessons in a positive and easy-to-act-on way.

How to Raise a Wild Child: the Art and Science of Falling in Love with Nature. Scott Sampson, $22.95

American children spend four to seven minutes a day playing outdoors — 90 percent less time than their parents did. Yet recent research indicates that experiences in nature are essential for healthy growth. Regular exposure to nature can help relieve stress, depression, and attention deficits. It can reduce bullying, combat illness, and boost academic scores. Most critical of all, abundant time in nature seems to yield long-term benefits in kids’ cognitive, emotional, and social development. Yet teachers, parents, and other caregivers lack a basic understanding of how to engender a meaningful, lasting connection between children and the natural world. 

How to Raise a Wild Child offers a timely and engaging antidote, showing how kids’ connection to nature changes as they mature. Distilling the latest research in multiple disciplines, Sampson reveals how adults can help kids fall in love with nature — enlisting technology as an ally, taking advantage of urban nature, and instilling a sense of place along the way.

I Wished for You: a Keepsake Adoption Journal. Carrie Kipp Howard, $23.99

Cherish every step. Remember every chapter. Love every moment. Celebrate your unique adoption story with this gently guided journal designed with adoptive parents in mind.

• Open-ended and playful prompts — perfect for any age or experience
• Lots of spots for notes, photographs, announcements, and other mementos
• Beautiful, simple design to make your own

Every child, every family’s story is unique... and now every story can be told. This beautifully designed keepsake journal captures all of the emotions, history, hopes, dreams, and surprises that each adoption journey entails through guided prompts that encourage parents to enjoy and reflect on their own experience. Created specifically for adoptive parents, I Wished for You celebrates each unique adoption story, where every milestone is remembered, every moment is cherished, and every child is wished for.

The Incredible Teenage Brain: Everything You Need to Know to Unlock Your Teen's Potential. Bettina Hohnen, Jane Gilmour & Tara Murphy, $27.95

Written by a team of leading clinical psychologists, this straightforward book walks the reader through the workings of the teenage brain. Pulling together the latest research, from brain imaging techniques to studies of teen behaviour, the authors provide an invaluable framework for parents, teachers, and professionals to understand how teenagers learn.

Uniquely, the authors provide a manual with clear strategies for what to do to support teens based on findings from neuroscience and psychology. They show that good relationships and communication are the bedrocks of supporting teens to develop, learn, and grow. They also highlight the importance of individual and learning differences, mental health, and a growth mindset, as part of the over-arching theoretical framework of the book. A must read for anyone supporting young people.

The Informed Parent: a Science-Based Resource for Your Child's First Four Years. Tara Haelle & Emily Willingham, $27.00

The latest scientific research on pregnancy, home birth, toilet training, breastfeeding, sleep training, vaccines, and other key topics — to help parents make their own best-informed decisions.

In the era of questionable Internet “facts” and parental over-sharing, it’s more important than ever to find credible information on everything from prenatal vitamins to screen time. Credible scientific studies are out there — and they’re “bottom-lined” in this book. The ultimate resource for today’s science-minded generation, The Informed Parent was written for readers who prefer facts to “friendly advice,” and who prefer to make up their own minds, based on the latest findings as well as their own personal preferences. Science writers and parents themselves, authors Tara Haelle and Emily Willingham have sifted through thousands of research studies on dozens of essential topics, and distill them in this essential and engaging book.

Kid Food: the Challenges of Feeding Children In a Highly Processed World. Bettina Elias Siegel, $27.50

In Kid Food, nationally recognized food writer Bettina Elias Siegel (New York Times, The Lunch Tray) explores the cultural delusions and industry deceptions that have made it all but impossible to raise a healthy eater in America. Combining first-person reporting with the hard-won understanding of a food advocate and parent, it presents a startling portrayal of the current food landscape for children — and the role of parents in navigating it. Siegel also lifts the curtain on shadowy food industry front-groups, including clever marketing techniques that intentionally confuse parents about a product's nutritional value. (Did you know that "made with real fruit" may mean a product is less healthy?) What emerges is the industry's divide-and-conquer strategy, one that stokes kids' desire for junk food while breaking down parents' ability to act as responsible gatekeepers.

For anyone who frets over what their child is eating, Kid Food offers both essential reading and a deeper understanding of the factors at play in their child's food environment. Written in the same engaging and relatable voice that has made The Lunch Tray a trusted resource for parents for almost a decade, Kid Food offers a well of compassion — and expertise — for those fighting the good fight at home.

The Kids Are in Bed: Finding Time for Yourself in the Chaos of Parenting. Rachel Bertsche, $22.00

Picture it — it's 8:30 p.m. You close the door to your child's room just as you hear your partner closing the dishwasher, and now it's time for an hour or two of glorious freedom. What do you do? Read the book you've been waiting to crack open all day? Chat on the phone with a friend, glass of wine in hand, or go out with pals and share a whole bottle? Or, like many modern parents, do you get caught up in chores, busywork, and social media black holes?

In an original survey conducted for this book, 71 percent of parents said their free time didn't feel free at all, because they were still thinking about all the things they should be doing for their kids, their jobs, and their households. Rachel Bertsche found herself in exactly that bind. After dozens of interviews with scientists and parenting experts, input from moms and dads across the country, and her own experiments with her personal time, Rachel figured out how to transform her patterns and reconnect to her pre-kids life. In The Kids Are in Bed, other parents can learn to do the same, and learn to truly enjoy the time after lights-out.

Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Richard Louv, $25.95

As children’s connections to nature diminish and the social, psychological, and spiritual implications become apparent, new research shows that nature can offer powerful therapy for such maladies as depression, obesity, and attention deficit disorder. In Last Child in the Woods, Louv talks with parents, children, teachers, scientists, religious leaders, child-development researchers, and environmentalists who recognize the threat and offer solutions. Louv shows us an alternative future, one in which parents help their kids experience the natural world more deeply — and find the joy of family connectedness in the process.

Let Them Eat Dirt: Saving Your Child from an Oversanitized World. B. Brett Finaly & Marie-Claire Arrieta, $19.95

Babies and young kids are being raised in surroundings that are increasingly cleaner, more hyper hygienic, and more disinfected than ever before. As a result, the beneficial bacteria in their bodies is being altered, promoting conditions and diseases such as obesity, diabetes, asthma, allergies, and autism. As Let Them Eat Dirt shows, there is much that parents can do about this, including breastfeeding if possible, getting a dog, and avoiding antibiotics unless necessary — and yes, it is OK to let kids get a bit dirty.

Let Your Kids Go Wild Outside: Creative Ways to Help Children Discover Nature and Enjoy the Great Outdoors. Fiona Bird, $27.95

In an era when the iPad is often more appealing than the park, it can be difficult to encourage kids to get off the couch and go outside. In this inspirational book, with ideas for children of all ages, foraging expert Fiona Bird shows the value of playing outside and discovering nature for children and families alike.

The outside adventure begins In the Woods, where children are encouraged to make a nature mobile, decorate pooh sticks, and make a wild kite. In Meadows and Hedgerows, ideas include designing a wild garland and making potpourri. Onward to Seashores, Rivers, and Ponds, where children can have fun with seaweed, from building a seawood oven to making seaweed bath parcels — and they can hone their survival skills by learning to make a beach net and collecting shellfish.

For those who don’t want to move far from home, there’s plenty to do in the Backyard Station, such as making a sundial, building a wormery, and attracting birds with a home-made bird table. Finally, in My Wild Kitchen, develop your child’s hunting and gathering skills with seasonal recipes made from natural ingredients, such as seaweed popcorn, bramble and poppyseed muffins, and snow-ice-cream.

Let's Get Ready for Reading: a Guide to Help Kids Become Readers. Toronto Public Library, $9.95

From the earliest age, children respond to stimuli that prepare them to enjoy books and reading. This guide offers a multitude of suggestions for parents and caregivers to foster a love of reading from the time a baby is born.

Whether it’s listening to the rhythmic cadence of chants and nursery rhymes, looking at brightly colored pictures, or listening to stories, children learn to associate reading with the warm and happy experience of spending time with a parent, grandparent, or caregiver. Filled with rhymes, songs, and games, Let’s Get Ready for Reading provides tons of suggestions for engaging kids, from using different voices for the characters in a book to helping them recognize shapes in preparation for learning the alphabet. A look at developmental milestones helps parents adapt strategies to the age of the child, while dozens of recommended books take out the guesswork during the next visit to the library or bookstore.

Listening to the Beat of Our Drum: Indigenous Parenting in Contemporary Society. Edited by Carries Bourassa, Elder Betty McKenna & Darlene Juschka, $29.95

Listening to the Beat of Our Drum: Indigenous Parenting in a Contemporary Society is a collection of stories, inspired by a wealth of experiences across space and time from a kokum, an auntie, two-spirit parents, a Metis mother, a Tlinglit/Anishnabe Métis mother and an allied feminist mother. This book is born out of the need to share experiences and story. Storytelling is one of the most powerful forms of passing on teachings and values that we have in our Indigenous communities. This book weaves personal stories to explore mothering practices and examines historical contexts and underpinnings that contribute to contemporary parenting practices. We share our stories with the hope that it will resonate with readers whether they are in the classroom or in the community. Like our contributors, we are from all walks of life, sharing diverse perspectives about mothering whether it be as a mother, auntie, kokum or other adopted role.

Loving Hands. Tony Johnston, illustrated by Amy June Bates, $21.99 (ages 4-6)

Hands wave hello, hands hold, hands heal. Hands say, I am here for you always. In simple, stirring rhymes, author Tony Johnston pens a timeless ode to parenthood. The small moments and quiet scenes that make up childhood — learning to clap, planting a garden, waving good-bye on the first day of school — fill the pages of this gentle tale, capturing the reassurance and love that parents hand their children every day. Warm illustrations by Amy June Bates show a young boy reaching for his mother’s hand as he grows older and more independent... until, perhaps, he can be the one to offer love and support with hands that say, I am here for you always. An eloquent look at the passage of time and the power of connection and care, this book is a heartfelt gift for loved ones at any and all milestones in life.

The M Word: Conversations about Motherhood. Edited by Kerry Clare, $22.95

In this original and sometimes provocative collection of essays, Saleema Nawaz, Alison Pick, Nancy Jo Cullen, Carrie Snyder, and many others explore the boundaries of contemporary motherhood. There are the women who have had too many children or not enough. There are women for whom motherhood is a fork in the road, encountered with contradictory emotions. And there are those who have made the conscious choice not to have children and then find themselves defined by that decision.

Many Ways to Say I LOVE YOU: Wisdom for Parents and Children from Mister Rogers. Fred Rogers, $23.00

Fred Rogers has long been a wonderful resource for parents, offering their children entertainment and education through his enduring television show. Now his special brand of good cheer and wisdom are brought together especially for parents in this newest book based on never-before-published works.

Many Ways to Say I Love You is a treasury of segments from speeches and observations from his years of working with parents and children, as well as other materials from books, songs, TV commentary, and more. Using stories from his own life, Mister Rogers discusses the importance of children and the role of parents.

MINDSETS for Parents: Strategies to Encourage Growth Mindsets in Kids. Mary Cay Ricci & Margaret Lee, $24.95

All parents want their children to be successful in school, sports, and extracurricular activities. But it's not just about giving your kids praise or setting them on the right direction. Research shows that success is often dependent on mindset. Hard work, perseverance, and effort are all hallmarks of a growth mindset. That's where Mindsets for Parents comes in. Designed to provide parents with a roadmap for developing a growth mindset home environment, this book's conversational style and real-world examples make the popular mindsets topic approachable and engaging. It includes tools for informally assessing the mindsets of both parent and child, easy-to-understand brain research, and suggested strategies and resources for use with children of any age. This book gives parents and guardians powerful knowledge and methods to help themselves and their children learn to embrace life's challenges with a growth mindset and an eye toward increasing their effort and success!

Motherhood So White: a Memoir of Race, Gender, and Parenting in America. Nefertiti Austin, $36.99

The path to creating a family is almost never easy or straightforward. As a single African American woman, Nefertiti Austin knew her journey would be more challenging than most. Eager to finally join the motherhood ranks, Austin felt discouraged by the roadblocks that seemed nearly insurmountable as she fought to adopt her son from the foster care system. Along the way, Austin realized that American society saw motherhood through a primarily white lens, and that there would be no easy understanding or acceptance of the kind of family she hoped to build.

Motherhood So White is the story of Nefertiti Austin's fight to create the family she always knew she was meant to have and the story of motherhood that all American families need now. In this unflinching account of her parenting journey, Nefertiti examines the history of adoption in the African American community, faces off against stereotypes of single, Black motherhood, and confronts the reality of raising children of color in racially charged, modern-day America.

Honest, vulnerable, and uplifting, Motherhood So White reveals what the author knew all along — that the only requirement for a successful family is one raised with love.

The New Childhood: Raising Kids to Thrive in a Connected World. Jordan Shapiro, $36.50

In The New Childhood, Jordan Shapiro provides a hopeful counterpoint to the fearful hand-wringing that has come to define our narrative around children and technology. Drawing on groundbreaking research in economics, psychology, philosophy, and education, The New Childhood shows how technology is guiding humanity toward a bright future in which our children will be able to create new, better models of global citizenship, connection, and community.

Shapiro offers concrete, practical advice on how to parent and educate children effectively in a connected world, and provides tools and techniques for using technology to engage with kids and help them learn and grow. He compares this moment in time to other great technological revolutions in humanity's past and presents entertaining micro-histories of cultural fixtures: the sandbox, finger painting, the family dinner, and more. But most importantly, The New Childhood paints a timely, inspiring and positive picture of today's children, recognizing that they are poised to create a progressive, diverse, meaningful, and hyper-connected world that today's adults can only barely imagine.

No-Drama Discipline: the Whole-Brain Way to Calm the Chaos and Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind. Daniel Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson, $23.00

The pioneering experts behind The Whole-Brain Child — Tina Payne Bryson and Daniel J. Siegel, the author of Brainstorm — now explore the ultimate child-raising challenge: discipline. Highlighting the fascinating link between a child’s neurological development and the way a parent reacts to misbehavior, No-Drama Discipline provides an effective, compassionate road map for dealing with tantrums, tensions, and tears — without causing a scene.

Defining the true meaning of the “d” word (to instruct, not to shout or reprimand), the authors explain how to reach your child, redirect emotions, and turn a meltdown into an opportunity for growth. By doing so, the cycle of negative behavior (and punishment) is essentially brought to a halt, as problem solving becomes a win/win situation.

No-Drama Discipline Workbook. Daniel Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson, $35.95

Exercises, activities, and practical strategies to calm the chaos and nurture developing minds.

The Overparenting Epidemic: Why Helicopter Parenting is Bad for Your Kids and Dangerous for You Too! George Glass & David tabatsky, $38.95

Overparenting — anxious, invasive, overly attentive, and competitive parenting — may have finally backfired. As we witness the first generation of overparented children becoming adults in their own right, many studies show that when baby boomer parents intervene inappropriately — with too much advice, excessive favors, and erasing obstacles that kids should negotiate themselves — their “millennial” children end up ill-behaved, anxious, narcissistic, entitled youths unable to cope with everyday life. The obsession with providing everything a child could possibly need, from macrobiotic cupcakes to 24/7 tutors, has created epidemic levels of depression and stress in our country’s youth, but this can be avoided if parents would just take a giant step back, check their ambitions at the door, and do what’s really best for their kids.

Written by a noted psychiatrist and a parenting specialist, The Overparenting Epidemic is a science-based yet humorous and practical book that features an easy-to-read menu of pragmatic, reasonable advice for how to parent children effectively and lovingly without overdoing it, especially in the context of today’s demanding world.

Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time. Brigid Schulte, $19.99

In OVERWHELMED, Schulte, a staff writer for The Washington Post, asks: Are our brains, our partners, our culture and our bosses making it impossible for us to experience anything but “contaminated time”?

How did researchers compile this statistic that said we were rolling in leisure — over four hours a day? Did any of us feel that we actually had downtime? Was there anything useful in their research — anything we could do?

OVERWHELMED is a map of the stresses that have ripped our leisure to shreds, and a look at how to put the pieces back together. Schulte speaks to neuroscientists, sociologists and hundreds of working parents to tease out the factors contributing to our collective sense of being overwhelmed, seeking insights, answers and inspiration. She investigates progressive offices that are trying to invent a new kind of workplace; she travels across Europe to get a sense of how other countries accommodate working parents; she finds younger couples who claim to have figured out an ideal division of chores, childcare and meaningful paid work. OVERWHELMED is the story of what she found out.

Parent Alert! How to Keep Your Kids Safe Online. Will Geddes, Nadia Sawalha & Kaye Adams, $21.99

Kids spend hours online, exploring the best the internet has to offer — but what about the risks? Who are they talking to on social media? How do you educate them about their digital footprint and protect them from trolls, bullies, frenemies, and stalkers? They may be tech-savvy, but they are not worldly-wise, so can you set ground rules? If they see you as a digital dinosaur, how do you encourage them to come to you if they are in trouble, and what actions should you take to prevent, minimize, or resolve the damage?

Packed with real-life scenarios, practical advice, and action plans in non-techspeak, Parent Alert! is your go-to guide for one of the greatest dangers facing children today. Celebrity best friends and concerned parents Nadia Sawalha and Kaye Adams ask the questions, and international security expert Will Geddes provides the no-nonsense answers. Learn best-practice cybersecurity on social media accounts; what signals might indicate that your child is falling prey to online grooming, bullying, or extortion; and how you can protect your kids from danger without being critical of them or setting unrealistic restrictions.

Parent Hacks: 134 Genius Shortcuts for Life with Kids. Asha Dornfest, $19.95

A parent hack can be as simple as putting the ketchup under the hot dog, minimizing the mess. Or strapping baby into a forward-facing carrier when you need to trim his fingernails — it frees your hands while controlling the squirming. Or stashing a wallet in a disposable diaper at the beach — who would ever poke through what looks like a used Pamper?

On every page, discover easy-to-do, boldly illustrated, unconventional solutions, arranged by category from Pregnancy & Postpartum through Sleep, Eating, Bath Time, Travel, and more.

Parenting Right From the Start: Laying a Healthy Foundation In the Baby and Toddler Years. Vanessa Lapointe, $19.99

Recent scientific research indicates a strong sense of connection between parents and children teaches children how to regulate emotions, master social skills, and develop a healthy sense of identity — essentially how to grow up. Unfortunately, many accepted parenting practices disrupt connection rather than fostering it, which may lead to lasting behavioral and emotional issues in children. According to Dr. Vanessa Lapointe, author of the bestselling Discipline Without Damage, nurturing connection should be the focus of all parenting efforts. But, along the way, many new parents may find themselves working through unsettled issues from their own childhoods. In Parenting Right From the Start, Dr. Lapointe shows parents how mindful, conscious parenting can work to nourish both child and parent.

Through the twin lenses of attachment parenting and the most up-to-date child development research, Dr. Lapointe walks parents through the battlegrounds where problems are most likely to arise for children—sleeping, feeding, toilet training, aggression, sibling rivalry — and she provides appropriate solutions designed to promote connection and growth. Rooted in compassion and understanding, Parenting Right From the Start shows parents how building a firm, caring presence in the early years is one that a child can lean into for a lifetime.

Parenting Through the Storm: How to Handle the Highs, the Lows, and Everything in Between. Ann Douglas, $22.99

Ann Douglas knows what it’s like to parent a child diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Ditto with depression, anorexia, Asperger syndrome and ADHD. Each of her four children has struggled with one or more conditions that fall under the “children’s mental health” umbrella.

From Canada’s bestselling and trusted parenting authority comes this honest and authoritative compendium of advice for parents who are living with children who have mental illnesses. It features interviews with experts on children’s mental health as well as parents and young people who have lived with (or who are living with) mental illness. Drawing on her own experience and expertise, Ann shows how to cope with years of worry and frustration about a child’s behaviour; how to effectively advocate for the child and work through treatments; how to manage siblings’ concerns and emotions; and, most importantly, how to thrive as a family.

Parenting with Presence: Practices for Raising Conscious, Confident, Caring Kids. Susan Stiffelman, $25.50

Our children can be our greatest teachers. Parenting expert Susan Stiffelman writes that the very behaviors that push our buttons — refusing to cooperate or ignoring our requests — can help us build awareness and shed old patterns, allowing us to raise our children with greater ease and enjoyment. Filled with practical advice, powerful exercises, and fascinating stories from her clinical work, Parenting with Presence teaches us how to become the parents we most want to be while raising confident, caring children.

Parenting Without God: How to Raise Moral, Ethical, and Intelligent Children Free from Religious Dogma, 2nd Edition. Dan Arel, $20.95

This practical guide — written with humility, compassion, and understanding — helps parents teach their children about standing up to religious proselytization and recognizing all forms of discrimination that hamper human dignity and democracy. It’s for parents who wish for their children to question everything and reach their own conclusions based on verifiable evidence. Above all, Arel makes the argument that parents should lead by example — both by speaking candidly about the importance of secularism and by living an unabashedly secular life.

Parenting Your Anxious Child with Mindfulness and Acceptance. Christopher McCurry, $25.50

A powerful new approach to overcoming fear, panic and worry using acceptance and commitment therapy.

The Parent's Guide to Baby-Led Weaning: Skip the Purees and Go Straight to Solids! Jennifer House, $19.95

Welcome to an exciting stage in your baby's life: starting solid food! This will be a fun time for both you and your little one as your baby explores new tastes and gains a place at the family table. Jennifer offers you expert advice on everything you need to know to practice baby-led weaning safely and confidently: why you might want to use this method, when to start, what nutrients your baby needs, how to prevent choking, how to deal with allergies and what to feed vegetarian babies. Plus, she answers a ton of real-life questions parents often have when starting baby-led weaning and provides 125 delicious family-friendly recipes. Discover all the wonderful benefits of baby-led weaning — from good nutrition and a decreased risk of picky eating as your baby gets older to faster dexterity development and a healthier overall relationship with food.

A Parent’s Guide to Raising Grieving Children: Rebuilding Your Family after the Death of a Loved One. Phyllis Silverman & Madelyn Kelly, $16.95

A comprehensive, thoughtful and commonsense book, A Parent’s Guide to Raising Grieving Children offers a wealth of solace, sound advice and hope.

Planting Seeds: Practicing Mindfulness with Children. Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village Community, $43.95

A complete overview of all of Thich Nhat Hanh’s practices for children, PLANTING SEEDS is full of hands-on activities to help children and adults relieve stress, increase concentration and confidence, deal with difficult emotions, and improve communication. It includes over 30 full-color illustrations and an audio CD with songs and easy-to-follow practices.

Positive Discipline for Today's Busy & Overwhelmed Parent: How to Balance Work, Parenting & Self for Lasting Well-Being.  Jane Nelsen, Kristina Bill & Joy Marchese, $23.00

With the increasing pressure to excel at parenting, work, and personal relationships, it's easy to feel stressed and dissatisfied. This targeted Positive Discipline guide gives parents the tools to parent effectively without sacrificing their well-being or giving up on their life goals. Instead of creating unachievable expectations, you will instead learn to play to your strengths at work and at home. You’ll integrate your seemingly disparate areas of life and use Positive Discipline to make the most out of your time, energy and relationships. By helping you get to the bottom of the underlying causes of misbehaviour, busy parents will also be able to avoid pampering and keep permissive and punitive parenting at bay. Instead of feeling fragmented and guilty, you’ll have the presence of mind to explore what works best for you and your family.

Attitude is key — we’ll help you feel confident in your parenting abilities and your professional choices, making your children more likely to adopt an attitude of self-reliance and cooperation. Armed with communication strategies and tips for self-reflection, moms (and dads!) won't have to feel guilty about leaving their child with a sitter during the day, or leaving work early to go to a soccer game.

The Power of Showing Up: How Parental Presence Shapes Who Are Kids Become and How Their Brains Get Wired. Daniel Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson, $36.00

One of the very best scientific predictors for how any child turns out — in terms of happiness, academic success, leadership skills, and meaningful relationships — is whether at least one adult in their life has consistently shown up for them. In an age of scheduling demands and digital distractions, showing up for your child might sound like a tall order. But as bestselling authors Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson reassuringly explain, it doesn’t take a lot of time, energy, or money. Instead, showing up means offering a quality of presence. And it’s simple to provide once you understand the four building blocks of a child’s healthy development. Every child needs to feel what Siegel and Bryson call the Four S’s:

• Safe: We can’t always insulate a child from injury or avoid doing something that leads to hurt feelings. But when we give a child a sense of safe harbor, she will be able to take the needed risks for growth and change.
• Seen: Truly seeing a child means we pay attention to his emotions — both positive and negative — and strive to attune to what’s happening in his mind beneath his behavior.
• Soothed: Soothing isn’t about providing a life of ease; it’s about teaching your child how to cope when life gets hard, and showing him that you’ll be there with him along the way. A soothed child knows that he’ll never have to suffer alone.
• Secure: When a child knows she can count on you, time and again, to show up — when you reliably provide safety, focus on seeing her, and soothe her in times of need, she will trust in a feeling of secure attachment. And thrive!

Based on the latest brain and attachment research, The Power of Showing Up shares stories, scripts, simple strategies, illustrations, and tips for honoring the Four S’s effectively in all kinds of situations — when our kids are struggling or when they are enjoying success; when we are consoling, disciplining, or arguing with them; and even when we are apologizing for the times we don’t show up for them. Demonstrating that mistakes and missteps are repairable and that it’s never too late to mend broken trust, this book is a powerful guide to cultivating your child’s healthy emotional landscape.

The Present Parent Handbook: 26 Simple Tools to Discover That This Moment, This Action, This Thought, This Feeling Is Exactly Why I Am Here. Timothy Duke, $20.99

If you can recognize that your child needs to be witnessed, held, and loved by you, he or she will have a chance to thrive. With all the distractions of work, technology, and life in general, The Present Parent Handbook invites parents to be mentally and emotionally available to their children. In the present, there is the opportunity to show up, pay attention, and become the parent you want to be. With an easy-to-follow A-Z format, every parent will be able to implement the 26+ simple tools to become a more present parent for their children.

Raising Empowered Daughters: a Dad-to-Dad Guide. Mike Adamick, $23.49

As a primary male role model in a girl's life, a father influences his daughter in profound ways, from the way she defines her female identity to what she expects from men. In Raising Empowered Daughters, Mike Adamick offers a wise and witty handbook for dads, suggesting ways to raise girls who won't settle for second-class-citizenship. Examining the extraordinary array of sexisms — both subtle and not-so-subtle — girls encounter, Adamick highlights not just the ways that girls and boys are treated differently but how the roles of moms and dads are shaped by society, too.

Full of eye-opening anecdotes and dad-relatable humor, this is a necessary guide for every father who wants to raise a confident daughter.

Raising Money-Smart Kids: How to Teach Your Kids about Money While Learning a Few Things Yourself. Robin Taub, $19.95

Raising Money-Smart Kids: How to Teach Your Kids about Money While Learning a Few Things Yourself shows you how to build money lessons into your daily lives so that money is not a taboo topic at home. It guides you through the five key areas of money management — Earn, Save, Spend, Share and Invest — and provides hands-on examples and suggestions that are specific and appropriate for each stage of your kids’ lives. The book also explains why it’s important to teach your kids about money — for their sake and for yours — and helps you get smarter with money so that you can lead by example. Raising Money-Smart Kids is a practical resource for parents with kids of all ages, one you will refer to again and again.

Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity In a Racialized World. Farzana Nayani, $21.95

The essential guide to parenting multiracial and multiethnic children of all ages and learning to support and celebrate their multiracial identities

In a world where people are more likely to proclaim color-blindness than talk openly about race, how can we truly value, support, and celebrate our kids' identities? How can we assess our own sense of Racial Dialogue Readiness and develop a deeper understanding of the issues facing multiracial children today? Raising Multiracial Children gives caregivers the tools for exploring race with their children, offering practical guidance on how to initiate conversations; consciously foster racial identity development; discuss issues like microaggressions, intersectionality, and privilege; and intentionally cultivate a sense of belonging. It provides an overview of key issues and current topics relevant to raising multiracial children and offers strategies and developmentally appropriate milestones from infancy through adulthood. The book ends with resources and references for further learning and exploration.

The Reflective Parent: How to Do Less and Relate More with Your Kids. Regina Pally, $34.95

Figuring out how to raise happy, healthy, and successful kids can be overwhelming. Parents find themselves wading through tons of conflicting advice. Books that outline a “right way” of doing things can leave even the most dedicated caregiver feeling discouraged and inadequate when real life doesn’t measure up. An experienced psychiatrist and founder of the Center for Reflective Communities, Regina Pally serves up something totally different in her book. She argues that the key to successful parenting is learning to slow down, reflect, and recognize that there is no one key to doing it right.

The Reflective Parent synthesizes the latest in neuroscience research to show that our brain’s natural tendencies to empathize, analyze, and connect with others are all we need to be good parents. Each chapter weaves together discussions of specific reflective parenting principles like “Tolerate Uncertainty” and “Repair Ruptures” with engaging explanations of the science that backs them up. Brief “Take Home Lessons” at the end of each chapter and vivid examples of parents and children putting the principles into action make this a highly readable, practical guide for anyone looking to build loving, lasting relationships with their kids.

Reflective Parenting: a Guide to Understanding What's Going On In Your Child's Mind. Alistair Cooper & Sheila Redfern, $41.90

Have you ever wondered what’s going on in your child’s mind? This engaging book shows how reflective parenting can help you understand your children, manage their behaviour and build your relationship and connection with them. It is filled with practical advice showing how recent developments in mentalization, attachment and neuroscience have transformed our understanding of the parent-child relationship and can bring meaningful change to your own family relationships.

Alistair Cooper and Sheila Redfern show you how to make a positive impact on your relationship with your child, starting from the development of the baby’s first relationship with you as parents, to how you can be more reflective in relationships with toddlers, children and young people. Using everyday examples, the authors provide you with practical strategies to develop a more reflective style of parenting and how to use this approach in everyday interactions to help your child achieve their full potential in their development; cognitively, emotionally and behaviourally.

Reflective Parenting is an informative and enriching read for parents, written to help parents form a better relationship with their children. It is also an essential resource for clinicians working with children, young people and families to support them in managing the dynamics of the child-parent relationship. This is a book that every parent needs to read.

Retro Toddler: More Than 100 Old-School Activities to Boost Development. Anne Zachry, $22.95

You don't need to buy high-tech digital devices, apps, or expensive toys to boost your toddler's brain development! Research shows that the best way for toddlers to learn is through daily, active play — and Retro Toddler includes more than 100 fun, age-appropriate, "old-school" activities that promote the development of language, motor and social skills. The book includes detailed instructions for developmentally stimulating toys that parents and toddlers can make together out of everyday household items. Parents will also learn

• What's happening inside the rapidly developing brain of a toddler
• How language, social, fine and gross motor skills develop during the toddler years
• How different parenting styles can affect a child's development
• How to successfully praise a child to achieve a growth mindset vs. a fixed mindset
• How to foster grit and self-control in toddlers
• The importance of play during the toddler years
• How excessive screen time is negatively impacting today's young children

With more than 25 years of experience as a pediatric occupational therapist and child development specialist, the author of Retro Toddler will provide you with the research-based information you need to help foster strong growth and development in your toddler — without breaking your budget.

Scattered Seeds: In Search of Family and Identity in the Sperm Donor Generation. Jacqueline Mroz, $22.49

As typical as donor-conceived children have become, their experiences are still unusual in many ways. In Scattered Seeds, journalist and writer Jacqueline Mroz looks at the growth of sperm donation and assisted reproduction and how it affects the children who are born, the women who buy and use the sperm to have kids, and the sperm donors who donate their genetic material to help others procreate. With empathy and in-depth analysis, Scattered Seeds explores the sociology, psychology, and anthropology surrounding those connected with fertility procedures today and looks back at the history that brought us to this point.

Scientific Parenting: What Science Reveals about Parental Influence. Nicole Letourneau, $24.99

Combining the expertise of its author — a celebrated expert in parent-infant mental health and mother of two — with the latest findings in gene-by-environment interactions, epigenetics, behavioural science, and attachment theory, SCIENTIFIC PARENTING describes how children's genes determine their sensitivity to good or bad parenting, how environmental cues can switch critical genes on or off, and how addictive tendencies and mental health problems can become hardwired into the human brain. The book traces conditions as diverse as heart disease, obesity, and depression to their origins in early childhood. It brings readers to the frontier of developmental research, unlocking the fascinating scientific discoveries currently hidden away in academic tomes and scholarly journals. Above all, SCIENTIFIC PARENTING explains why parenting really matters and how parents' smallest actions can transform their children's lives.

Self Care for Moms: 150+ Real Ways to Care for Yourself While Caring for Everyone Else. Sara Robinson, $21.99

As a mom, you care — a lot. Whether it be physical, emotional, social, or practical, you’re there to attend to all of your family’s needs. But with so much to take care of, it can be hard to find time to care of yourself. With Self-Care for Moms, you’ll learn how easy it is to incorporate self-care into your own routine in practical, yet meaningful, ways. In this book, you’ll find 150 realistic self-care activities that you can try right away. To help busy moms like you maximize any moment you can find for yourself, each activity is designed to fit easily within a set short time frame. For example:

• 5 minutes: Call a friend; Listen to a favorite song; Light a candle
• 15 minutes: Soak your feet; Read a chapter in a book; Enjoy a leisurely cup of tea
• 30 minutes: Give yourself a facial; Plan for a vacation; Go for a walk
• 1 hour: Meet a friend for lunch; Go for a manicure; Attend a workout class

You’ll also find ideas for activities that span larger amounts of time for inspiration and motivation to take some much-needed and well-earned extra time for yourself. There’s even a few aspirational activities, such as trips or projects, that last a day — or more — with a realistic plan for how to organize and coordinate your schedule to accommodate the occasional — but very important — extended time to focus on yourself. Start taking time for you — it’s easier than you think and besides, you deserve it!

The Self-Driven Child: the Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives. William Stixrud & Ned Johnson, $23.00

A few years ago, Bill Stixrud and Ned Johnson started noticing the same problem from different angles: Even high-performing kids were coming to them acutely stressed and lacking motivation. Many complained they had no control over their lives. Some stumbled in high school or hit college and unraveled. Bill is a clinical neuropsychologist who helps kids gripped by anxiety or struggling to learn. Ned is a motivational coach who runs an elite tutoring service. Together they discovered that the best antidote to stress is to give kids more of a sense of control over their lives. But this doesn’t mean giving up your authority as a parent. In this groundbreaking book they reveal how you can actively help your child to sculpt a brain that is resilient, and ready to take on new challenges.

The Self-Driven Child offers a combination of cutting-edge brain science, the latest discoveries in behavioral therapy, and case studies drawn from the thousands of kids and teens Bill and Ned have helped over the years to teach you how to set your child on the real road to success. As parents, we can only drive our kids so far. At some point, they will have to take the wheel and map out their own path. But there is a lot you can do before then to help them tackle the road ahead with resilience and imagination.

SEX is a Funny Word: a Book about Bodies, Feelings, and YOU. Cory Silverberg & Fiona Smyth. $23.95

A comic book for kids that includes children and families of all makeups, orientations, and gender identities, Sex Is a Funny Word is an essential resource about bodies, gender, and sexuality for children ages 8 to 10 as well as their parents and caregivers. Topics covered include:

• What is sex?
• Privacy, safety, and respect
• Boundaries regarding nudity, talking about sex, and touch
• Assigned sex, gender identity, and gender roles
• Names and functions of body parts
• Talking about the word “sexy”
• Protecting yourself against unwanted sexual touch and abuse
• Crushes, love, and sexy feelings 

Much more than the "facts of life" or “the birds and the bees," Sex Is a Funny Word opens up conversations between young people and their caregivers in a way that allows adults to convey their values and beliefs while providing information about boundaries, safety, and joy. Sex Is a Funny Word is the first sex education book for this age group that is inclusive of lesbian, gay, and bisexual experience as well as gender creative and gender nonconforming children.

Sharenthood: Why We Should Think Before We Talk About Our Kids Online. Leah Plunkett, $35.95

Our children's first digital footprints are made before they can walk — even before they are born — as parents use fertility apps to aid conception, post ultrasound images, and share their baby's hospital mug shot. Then, in rapid succession come terabytes of baby pictures stored in the cloud, digital baby monitors with built-in artificial intelligence, and real-time updates from daycare. When school starts, there are cafeteria cards that catalog food purchases, bus passes that track when kids are on and off the bus, electronic health records in the nurse's office, and a school surveillance system that has eyes everywhere. Unwittingly, parents, teachers, and other trusted adults are compiling digital dossiers for children that could be available to everyone-friends, employers, law enforcement-forever. In this incisive book, Leah Plunkett examines the implications of "sharenthood" — adults' excessive digital sharing of children's data. She outlines the mistakes adults make with kids' private information, the risks that result, and the legal system that enables "sharenting."

Plunkett describes various modes of sharenting-including "commercial sharenting," efforts by parents to use their families' private experiences to make money — and unpacks the faulty assumptions made by our legal system about children, parents, and privacy. She proposes a "thought compass" to guide adults in their decision making about children's digital data: play, forget, connect, and respect. Enshrining every false step and bad choice, Plunkett argues, can rob children of their chance to explore and learn lessons. The Internet needs to forget. We need to remember.

The Simple Guide to Sensitive Boys: How to Nurture Children and Avoid Trauma. Betsy de Thierry, $21.95

Too often, adults think of sensitive boys as shy, anxious and inhibited. They are measured against society's ideas about 'manliness' — that all boys are sociable, resilient and have endless supplies of energy. This highly readable guide is for any adult wanting to know how to understand and celebrate sensitive boys. It describes how thinking about boys in such old-fashioned ways can cause great harm, and make a difficult childhood all the more painful. The book highlights the real strengths shared by many sensitive boys — of being compassionate, highly creative, thoughtful, fiercely intelligent and witty. It also flips common negative clichés about sensitive boys being shy, anxious and prone to bullying to ask instead: what we can do to create a supportive environment in which they will flourish?

Full of simple yet sage advice, this book will help you to encourage boys to embrace their individuality, find their own place in the world, and to be the best they can be.

Sitting Still Like a Frog: Mindfulness Exercises for Kids (and Their Parents). Eline Snel, $19.95

Simple mindfulness practices to help your child deal with anxiety, improve concentration, and handle difficult emotions. The accompanying CD has guided meditations to help children calm down, manage anger, fall asleep easily, and generally become more patient and aware.

Sleep Wrecked Kids: Helping Parents Raise Happy, Healthy Kids — One Sleep at a Time. Sharon Moore, $27.95

Kids often suffer unknowingly from the consequences of sleep problems because their issue is frequently missed or dismissed, by both health professionals and parents.

Sleep disorders are a major public health issue that can kick start a lifetime pattern of health, behaviour, and learning problems. From ages 4-10, at least 25 percent of kids have sleep problems. Sleep Wrecked Kids guides parents towards good sleep as the norm, allowing themselves and their children to grow and thrive. Speech pathologist and myofunctional practitioner Sharon Moore teaches parents why ‘bad sleep’ is connected to a myriad of health problems, what ‘good sleep’ actually means, how to identify red flags for sleep problems, how to improve sleep quality by improving airway health, and so much more! Parents are empowered to not only get more sleep themselves, but also to help their children get the sleep they need — every night.

Sleepless Nights and Kisses for Breakfast: Reflections on Fatherhood. Matteo Bussola, $24.00

Matteo Bussola is a designer and cartoonist who lives in Verona, Italy with his wife Paola; their three young daughters, Virginia, Ginevra, and Melania (ages eight, four, and two); and their two dogs. For two years, he’s been writing posts on Facebook capturing the beauty of ordinary moments with his family. Sleepless Nights and Kisses for Breakfast is the memoir that grew out of these writings. Divided into winter, spring, summer, and fall, the book follows the different seasons of parenthood and life. At times moving, and at others humorous, these writings remind people to savor the present and appreciate the simple things in life.

The Story Cure: an A-Z of Books to Keep Kids Happy, Healthy and Wise. Ella Berthoud & Susan Elderkin, $31.50

A literary first aid kit of book recommendations for children of all ages. From tantrums to tummy aches to teenage mood swings, there are times when a book is the best medicine of all. The Story Cure is a manual for grown-ups who believe that the stories which shape children's lives should not be left to chance.

In these pages bibliotherapists Ella and Susan recommend the perfect children's book — from picture books to YA novels via the golden world of chapter books — for every hiccup and heartache. Whether the young child you know is being bullied, the toddler can't sleep, or the teenager has fallen in love for the first time — or just doesn't know what to read next — the right story will help them feel themselves again. Packed full of helpful lists of the best books to read when turning ten or going through a spy/horse/superhero phase, you'll find old favourites such as The Borrowers and The Secret Garden alongside modern classics by MT Anderson, Malorie Blackman and Frank Cottrell Boyce. The Story Cure is the perfect companion for initiating young readers into one of life's greatest pleasures.

Strange Situation: a Mother's Journey Into the Science of Attachment. Bethany Saltman, $36.00

When professional researcher and writer Bethany Saltman gave birth to her daughter, Azalea, she loved her deeply but felt as if something was missing. Looking back at her lonely childhood, dangerous teenage years, and love-addicted early adulthood, Saltman thought maybe she was broken.

Then she discovered the science of attachment, the field of psychology that explores the question of why — from an evolutionary point of view — love exists between parents and children. Saltman went on a ten-year journey visiting labs, archives, and training sessions, while learning the meaning of “delight” from Mary Ainsworth, one of psychology’s most important but unsung researchers, who died in 1999.

Saltman went deep into the history and findings from Ainsworth’s famous laboratory procedure, the Strange Situation, which, like an X-ray, is still used today by scientists around the world to catch a glimpse of the internal workings of attachment. In this simple twenty-minute procedure, a baby and a caregiver enter an ordinary room with two chairs and some toys. During a series of comings and goings, a trained observer studies the minutiae of the pair’s back-and-forth with each other.

Through the science of attachment, what Saltman discovered was a radical departure from everything she thought she knew — about love and about her own family, her story, and herself. She was far from broken — she saw that love is too powerful to ever break.

Strange Situation is a scientific, lyrical, life-affirming exploration of love. Not only will readers be taken on an emotional ride through one mother’s reckoning with her own past and her family’s future, but they will also be given the tools with which to better understand their own life histories and their relationships today.

The Strength Switch: How the New Science of Strength-Based Parenting Can Help Your Child and Your Teen to Flourish. Lea Waters, $36.00

This game-changing book shows us the extraordinary results of focusing on our children’s strengths rather than always trying to correct their weaknesses. Most parents struggle with this shift because they suffer from a negativity bias, thanks to evolutionary development, giving them “strengths-blindness.” By showing us how to throw the “strengths switch,” Lea Waters demonstrates how we can not only help our children build resilience, optimism, and achievement but we can also help inoculate them against today’s pandemic of depression and anxiety.

As a strengths-based scientist for more than twenty years, ten of them spent focusing on strengths-based parenting, Waters has seen how this approach enhances self-esteem and energy in both children and teenagers. Yet more on the plus side: parents find it a particularly exciting and rewarding way to raise children. With many suggestions for specific ways to interact with your kids, Waters demonstrates how to discover strengths and talents in our children, how to use positive emotions as a resource, how to build strong brains, and even how to deal with problem behaviors and talk about difficult situations and emotions. As revolutionary yet simple as Mindset and Grit, The Strength Switch will show parents how a small shift can yield enormous results.

10 Things Girls Need Most to Grow Up Strong and Free. Steve Biddulph, $29.99

In answer to the crisis in girls’ mental health, Steve Biddulph brings an interactive learning guide rich in content and interactive elements to help parents be prepared and self-aware in providing for their daughters. The best-selling author of Raising Girls, psychologist and parent educator offers an interactive experience for parents to explore the relationship with their girls from the cradle to the teenager.

It is a guided journey of exercises, conversations, reflections and self-rating questionnaires that builds the inner capacities in a parent, targeted at each stage of their daughters growing up. Every aspect — love and security in babyhood, mindfulness, setting boundaries, emotional well-being and emotional literacy, education and learning in primary and secondary school, friendship, puberty and adolescence, sexuality and sexualization, choosing partners and negotiating equality and respect — in fact everything a father or mother needs to think about to be prepared and self-aware in providing for their growing girl.

There's No Such Thing as Bad Weather: a Scandinavian Mom's Secrets for Raising Healthy, Resilient, and Confident Kids. Linda Åkeson McGurk, $22.00

When Swedish-born Linda McGurk moved to small-town Indiana with her American husband to start a family, she quickly realized that her outdoorsy ways were not the norm. In Sweden children play outside all year round, regardless of the weather, and letting young babies nap outside in freezing temperatures is not only common — it is a practice recommended by physicians. In the US, on the other hand, she found that the playgrounds, which she had expected to find teeming with children, were mostly deserted. In preschool, children were getting drilled to learn academic skills, while their Scandinavian counterparts were climbing trees, catching frogs, and learning how to compost. Worse, she realized that giving her daughters the same freedom to play outside that she had enjoyed as a child in Sweden could quickly lead to a visit by Child Protective Services.

The brewing culture clash finally came to a head when McGurk was fined for letting her children play in a local creek, setting off an online firestorm when she expressed her anger and confusion on her blog. The rules and parenting philosophies of her native country and her adopted homeland were worlds apart.

Struggling to fit in and to decide what was best for her children, McGurk turned to her own childhood for answers. Could the Scandinavian philosophy of “there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes” be the key to better lives for her American children? And how would her children’s relationships with nature change by introducing them to Scandinavian concepts like friluftsliv (“open-air living”) and hygge (the coziness and the simple pleasures of home)? McGurk embarked on a six-month-long journey to Sweden to find out. There’s No Such Thing as Bad Weather is a fascinating personal narrative that highlights the importance of spending time outdoors, and illustrates how the Scandinavian culture could hold the key to raising healthier, resilient, and confident children in America.

Thicker Than Blood: Adoptive Parenting in the Modern World. Marion Crook, $18.95

Thicker Than Blood is a comprehensive yet down-to-earth look at adoptive parenting in the twenty-first century. Author Marion Crook's family includes two adopted sons; in her experience, adoptive parents need to acquire skills, knowledge, and a good sense of humour in order to deal with the emotional upheavals of raising adopted children.

The book looks at all facets of adoption, including its dark history over the past 100 years when it was seen as a lower-class option for desperate parents, or when children were taken from single mothers against their will. Today, adoption is much more open-minded ― LGBT adoptive parents and adoptive single parents are now commonplace ― yet challenges linger, from adoptive children suffering from PTSD to those dealing with issues of anger and abandonment. Marion Crook gently takes adoptive parents through the process of adoption from childhood to adulthood, helping to demystify the experience with compassion and reassurance.

Meticulously researched but refreshingly free of academic jargon, Thicker Than Blood will enlighten and empower adoptive parents and those who work with adopted children alike.

Think Like a Baby: 33 Simple Research Experiments You Can Do at Home to Better Understand Your Child's Developing Mind. Amber Ankowski & Andy Ankowski, $19.95

Raising a baby is joyful, amazing... and ridiculously difficult. But with some insight into what's actually going on inside your little one's head, your job as a parent can become a little bit easier — and a lot more fun. In Think Like a Baby, coauthors Amber and Andy Ankowski — The Doctor and the Dad — show parents how to re-create classic child development experiments using common household items.

These simple step-by-step experiments apply from the third trimester through age seven and beyond and help parents understand their children's physical, cognitive, language, and social development. Amazed parents won't just read about how their kids are behaving, changing, and thinking at various stages, they'll actually see it for themselves while interacting and having fun with them at the same time.

This Is Ridiculous This Is Amazing: Parenthood in 71 Lists. Jason Good, $20.95

Blogging sensation and family man Jason Good delivers a laugh-out-loud reminder that everything is easier and more fun when approached with a sense of humor — especially parenting. Each list captures a perfect (or perfectly terrible) aspect of parenthood while wholeheartedly embracing every moment: "You Deserve a Break" offers ideas for downtime, such as giving blood and untangling cords, while "Self-Help from a Three-Year-Old" collects such wisdom as "If you fall down, stay down. Someone will pick you up eventually." Sweet, sincere, and oh-so-true, this is the ideal gift for parents who could use a laugh. And isn't that every single one of them?

THREADS. Torill Kove, National Film Board of Canada, $19.95 (all ages)

Beautiful in its simplicity, Threads illustrates the enduring bond that unites a mother and child over a lifetime of love, learning, and letting go. A masterfully illustrated exploration of the beauty and complexity of parental love. In Torill Kove's delicate and moving story, a woman joins her peers to grasp for threads dangling from the sky, each representing an unknown opportunity. Our protagonist snags a particularly special looking thread and is whisked away on an adventure. She flies across the city and the countryside and comes down gently to meet her fate. Holding the other end of the thread is an infant girl. A mother-daughter connection is born. As love and trust grow, the thread shared between mother and daughter is pulled and stretched across new experiences, until finally, it must be broken so that the daughter can go out on her own. However, both mother and daughter keep a part of the thread that brought them together. The love in their hearts will never truly let them be separated.

Adapted from the National Film Board animation of the same name, Kove's beautiful and touching portrayal of the loving bond shared by a mother and daughter was named one of the 10 best films at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival.

The Time Has Come: Why Men Must Join the Gender Equality Revolution. Michael Kaufman, $22.95

From founding the White Ribbon Campaign, the world’s largest organized effort of men working to end violence against women, in the early 1990s, to his appointment as the only male member of the G7 Gender Equality Advisory Council, Michael Kaufman has been a major figure in promoting social justice and women’s rights for decades. Now, in The Time Has Come, he issues a stirring call for men to mobilize in the movement for gender equality.

Weaving together sociological data, personal experiences, and insights gleaned from decades of work with governments and NGOs around the globe, Kaufman explores topics ranging from domestic violence to parental leave, grappling with the ways in which a culture of toxic masculinity hurts women and men (and their children). Informative and provocative, The Time Has Come demonstrates how real gender equality creates advancements in both the workplace and the global economy, and urges men to become dedicated allies in dismantling the patriarchy.

To Change a Mind: Parenting to Promote Maturity in Teenagers. John McKinnon, $33.95

Using case studies gathered from his years helping parents with troubled adolescents, the author explores the ways that adolescent development can be derailed in today’s complex culture and how parents can prevent this from happening in the first place. Dr. McKinnon writes about how parents need to recognize their children as individuals, with their own feelings and opinions, as they start to establish their separate identities as young people and begin to negotiate their way through high school and beyond. He also makes clear that parents must continue to establish limits.

Packed with examples and sensible and practical advice for parents of pre-teens and teenagers, To Change a Mind is an essential guidebook for parents seeking to make their lives — and the lives of their children — richer and more fulfilling, as the family navigates together the potentially treacherous seas of adolescence.

Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls. Lisa Damour, $23.00

An urgently needed guide to the alarming increase in anxiety and stress experienced by girls from elementary school through college, from the New York Times bestselling author of Untangled

Though anxiety has risen among young people overall, studies confirm that it has skyrocketed in girls. Research finds that the number of girls who said that they often felt nervous, worried, or fearful jumped 55 percent from 2009 to 2014, while the comparable number for adolescent boys has remained unchanged. In the engaging, anecdotal style and reassuring tone that won over thousands of readers of her first book, Damour starts by addressing the facts about psychological pressure. She explains the surprising and underappreciated value of stress and anxiety: that stress can helpfully stretch us beyond our comfort zones, and anxiety can play a key role in keeping girls safe. When we emphasize the benefits of stress and anxiety, we can help our daughters take them in stride.

Damour then turns to the many facets of girls’ lives where tension takes hold: their interactions at home, pressures at school, social anxiety among other girls and among boys, and their lives online. As readers move through the layers of girls’ lives, they’ll learn about the critical steps that adults can take to shield their daughters from the toxic pressures to which our culture — including we, as parents — subjects girls.

Vitamin N: 500 Ways to Enrich the Health & Happiness of Your Family and Community. Richard Louv, $23.95

From Richard Louv, the bestselling author who defined the term “nature-deficit disorder,” Vitamin N (for “nature”) is a complete prescription for connecting with the power and joy of the natural world right now, Vitamin N is a practical guidebook for the whole family, offering parents eager to share nature with their kids tips, activities, and ideas for young and old alike.

Waking Up: a Parent's Guide to Mindful Awareness and Connection. Raelynn Maloney, $20.95

Practice the MindfulWay of aware parenting and strengthen your relationship with your child.

Welcome to Your Child's Brain: How the Mind Grows from Conception to College. Sandra Aamodt & Sam Wang, $24.00

How children think is one of the most enduring mysteries-and difficulties-encountered by parents. In an effort to raise our children smarter, happier, stronger, and better, parents will try almost anything, from vitamins to toys to DVDs. But how can we tell marketing from real science? And what really goes through your kid's growing mind-as an infant, in school, and during adolescence?

Neuroscientists Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang explain the facets and functions of the developing brain, discussing salient subjects such as sleep problems, language learning, gender differences, and autism. They dispel common myths about important subjects such as the value of educational videos for babies, the meaning of ADHD in the classroom, and the best predictor of academic success (hint: It's not IQ ). Most of all, this book helps you know when to worry, how to respond, and, most important, when to relax. Welcome to Your Child's Brain upends myths and misinformation with practical advice, surprising revelations, and real, reliable science. It's essential reading for parents of children of any age, from infancy well into their teens.

Welcoming a New Brother or Sister through Adoption. Arleta James, $26.95

Adoption is a big step which changes the whole dynamics of the family. It is crucial that parents understand the impact it has when new sibling relationships are forged and an adoptee becomes a part of the family. WELCOMING A NEW BROTHER OR SISTER THROUGH ADOPTION is a comprehensive yet accessible guide that describes the adoption process and the impact of adoption on every member of the family, including the adopted child. It prepares families to have realistic expectations and equips them with knowledge to deal with a host of situations that may arise, addressing difficult questions head-on, and exploring solutions in detail. All this is accompanied with real life stories and direct quotes from children, which make it a realistic and insightful resource. This book is vital reading for adoptive families and professionals who work with them including social workers, counselors and psychologists.

Well Played: the Ultimate Guide to Awakening Your Family's Playful Spirit. Meredith Sinclair, $24.99

In our age of digital addiction, many of us have lost our ability to be spontaneous. More parents are complaining that they no longer even remember how to play with their children, or their spouse, and even with their own friends. In Well Played, Meredith Sinclair helps families relearn what used to come naturally and shows how to find happiness through play. For children, playing comes naturally, or at least it used to. But today that kind of easy-going fun is harder to come by, for both kids and their parents. With hectic lifestyles and constant technology overload, families have simply forgotten how to play. The solution? Relearn how to integrate fun and creative play into our day-to-day lives.

Packed with fun and engaging line drawings, entertaining DIY projects, and hundreds of lists and tips on capturing the game-changing joy of goofing off, Well Played is an indispensable guide for families to incorporate quality fun and playtime into our daily lives. 

What Kind of Parent Am I? Self-Surveys That Reveal the Impact of Toxic Stress and More. Nicole Letourneau, $17.99

Toxic stress can occur in any home, rich or poor, regardless of age, education, or walk of life. Research has shown that adaptive, supportive parents are the best at insulating their children from all but the biggest catastrophes. Exposure to “toxic stress” in childhood can cause depression, alcoholism, obesity, violent behaviour, heart disease, and even cancer in adulthood. Parents who are less sensitive or attentive or who regularly misinterpret their children’s needs can let too much stress trickle through, or even cause it in the first place, which can carry on to the next generation.

What Kind of Parent Am I? uses specially created surveys to identify problem areas for parents. With recommended resources and advice throughout, Dr. Letourneau informs and empowers parents to deal directly with their unique risks and challenges, helping them become the best parents they can be.

What Makes a Baby? A Book for Every Kind of Family and Every Kind of Kid. Cory Silverberg, illustrated by Fiona Smyth, $24.95

This amazing, wonderful, delightful book tells the story of where babies come from. While it doesn’t include any information on sexual intercourse, donor insemination, fertility treatments, surrogacy or adoption, it does give the facts of how babies are made in the most open, accurate and inclusive manner imaginable. A book to be shared and cherished.

What's My Child Thinking? Practical Child Psychology for Modern Parents. Tanith Carey, $21.99

Find out what your child really means when he says "Look what I did", "But I'm not tired," or "You're embarrassing me," and discover what's really going on when he can't express himself at all.

Using more than 100 everyday scenarios, the book leads you through each one step by step, explaining not only your child's behavior and the psychology behind it but also your own feelings as a parent. It then gives instant recommendations for what you could say and do in response to best resolve the situation. Covering all your child's developmental milestones from ages 2 to 7 years, What's My Child Thinking? covers important issues, such as temper tantrums, friendships (real and imaginary), sibling rivalry, aggressive behavior, and peer pressure. There's also a bank of practical "survival guides" for critical times, such as traveling in the car, eating out, and going online safely.

Rooted in evidence-based clinical psychology and championing positive parenting, What's My Child Thinking? will help you tune in to your child's innermost thoughts and be the parent you want to be.

Where's the Mother? Stories from a Transgender Dad. Trevor MacDonald, $21.99

In a time when to most people “pregnancy” automatically means “motherhood,” what is it like to get pregnant, give birth, and breastfeed a child — all while being an out transgender man?

When Trevor MacDonald decided to start a family, he knew that the world was going to have questions for him.  Luckily for the reader, Trevor responds with grace and humour.  His stories convey the intimate and sometimes surprising realities of the transgender parenting experience. This memoir is a book about being a breastfeeding parent and a transgender man, and the many beautiful, moving, and difficult ways these two identities collide.

White Parents, Black Children: Experiencing Transracial Adoption. Darron Smith, Cardell Jacobson & Brenda Juárez, $28.95

White Parents, Black Children looks at the difficult issue of race in transracial adoptions — particularly the adoption by white parents of children from different racial and ethnic groups. This book aims to bring to light racial issues that are often difficult for families to talk about, focusing on the racial socialization white parents provide for their transracially adopted children about what it means to be black in contemporary society. Blending the stories of adoptees and their parents with extensive research, the authors discuss trends in transracial adoptions, and offer suggestions to help adoptees develop a healthy sense of self.

Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About the Emerging Science of Sex Differences, 2nd Edition. Leonard Sax, $22.99

Eleven years ago, Why Gender Matters broke ground in illuminating the differences between boys and girls–how they perceive the world differently, how they learn differently, how they process emotions and take risks differently. Dr. Sax argued that in failing to recognize these hardwired differences between boys and girls, we ended up reinforcing damaging stereotypes, medicalizing normal behavior (see: the rising rates of ADHD diagnosis), and failing to support kids to reach their full potential. In the intervening decade, the world has changed drastically, with an avalanche of new research which supports, deepens, and expands Dr. Sax’s work. This revised and updated edition includes new findings about how boys and girls interact differently with social media and video games; a completely new discussion of research on gender non-conforming, LGB, and transgender kids, new findings about how girls and boys see differently, hear differently, and even smell differently; and new material about the medicalization of bad behavior.

The Wonder Weeks, Revised Edition. Hetty van de Rijt & Frans Plooij, $25.95

How to stimulate the most important developmental weeks in your baby's first 20 months, and turn these ten predictable, great, fussy phases into magical leaps forward!

• See the world through your baby’s perspective
• Learn how to encourage each leap foreword
• Help your baby with the three C's of fussy behavior Cranky, Clingy, Crying
• Know which games and toys are best during each key week
• Use calendars, charts and checklists to make sense of their behavior
• Week-by-week guide to baby’s behavior

The Yes Brain: How to Cultivate Courage, Curiosity, and Resilience In Your Child. Daniel Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson, $23.00

When facing challenges, unpleasant tasks, and contentious issues such as homework, screen time, food choices, and bedtime, children often act out or shut down, responding with reactivity instead of receptivity. This is what New York Times bestselling authors Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson call a No Brain response. But our kids can be taught to approach life with openness and curiosity. Parents can foster their children’s ability to say yes to the world and welcome all that life has to offer, even during difficult times. This is what it means to cultivate a Yes Brain.

When kids work from a Yes Brain, they’re more willing to take chances and explore. They’re more curious and imaginative, less worried about making mistakes. They’re better at relationships and more flexible and resilient when it comes to handling adversity and big feelings. They work from a clear internal compass that directs their decisions, as well as the way they treat others. Guided by their Yes Brain, they become more open, creative, and resilient. In The Yes Brain, the authors give parents skills, scripts, ideas, and activities to bring kids of all ages into the overwhelmingly beneficial “yes” state.

With inspirational anecdotes, fun and helpful illustrations, and a handy Yes Brain Refrigerator Sheet to keep your family on point, The Yes Brain is an essential tool for nurturing positive potential and keeping your child’s inner spark glowing and growing strong—and gifting your children with a life of rich relational connections, meaningful interactions with the world, and emotional equanimity.

Your Self-Motivated Baby: Enhance Your Baby's Social and Cognitive Development in the First Six Months of Life through Movement. Beverly Stokes, $32.49

A hands-on guide for communicating with babies in their first six months and nurturing their physical, social, and cognitive development, Your Self-Motivated Baby shows parents and other caregivers how to interact with very young infants and understand what they are expressing in their movements. Color photographs throughout the book show babies' motivation in play and how subtle interactions build bonding and encourage development. Following advice from author Beverly Stokes, a seasoned developmental movement educator, adults learn how to relate to babies and communicate effectively with them. Beverly Stokes makes it clear that preverbal babies are giving cues for caregiver participation very early on; it's up to us to try to understand them better. By communicating with babies sensitively in the first six months of their lives, we help them to establish the foundation for a healthy, confident, and joyful life. 

You're Ruining My Life! Surviving the Teenage Years with Connected Parenting. Jennifer Kolari, $21.00

In her new book, Jennifer Kolari applies her empathic approach to parenting to what may be the most difficult time for parents — adolescence. Combining her own experience as a therapist with the most recent scientific information about mental processes, she explains what's going on inside the teenage brain as well as what's going on in their world. This understanding allows parents to de-escalate confrontations by applying techniques such as CALM (Connect, Affect, Listen, Mirror) that bypass language and go directly to the part of the brain that regulates emotion. By understanding how teens think (or don't think) parents come to see why it's so important to create and maintain a strong emotional bond that will allow their almost grown-up children to correct and contain unacceptable behaviours.